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‘By MARGARET W. MORLEY 


AUTHOR OF **DOWN NORTH AND UP ALONG” 
eine HOWEY MARKERS,’ “ BEE PEOPLE,’ ETG. 


NEW YORK+- DODD, MEAD 
AND COMPANY - MDCCCC 


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UNIVERSITY PRESS - JOHN WILSON 
AND SON - CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 


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PART | 
THE SOCIAL WASPS, OR VESPID/EZ 
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‘Without Ears, they Hear ; without Noses, oy 
Smell ; and without Tongues, they Con- 


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ses oF Wasps and Nesig oo cs oe oe. AGS 
Superstitions about Wasps). . . . . . 474 
NS RR He. Nr. Oe a a a, We | 


8 CONTENTS 
DG sa Ra ane DAE ea OMEN RAT NEL EEE aE 
PART II 
THE SOLITARY WASPS 
The (Masons airs aye Ce ite all earl Nest 
The ‘Carpenters iy.) sit Si petuetieles. Wer) ie eee 
Phe Miners wes chal enn oMoesrs als) ie ae 


PPE NTIS (SMe el ni nee ames Thea) Saya! a, Seer 


fort kRODUCTION 


HE wasps, bees, and ants, as well as 
the gall-flies, saw-flies, and a few 
other insects, are branches of the same 
family tree, being doubtless all descended 
from some common ancestral 
stock that flourished in long- , 
ago geological ages. 

They are classed by man in 
what he calls the Order Hymen- 
optera, or Order of Membrane- 
winged Insects, —a very mis- 


are quite as membrane-winged as these. 

The Hymenoptera resemble the general 
family of insects in possessing a distinct 
head, thorax, and abdomen, each of these 
parts having functions of its own. 

They differ from_other insects in the 
manner in which abdomen and thorax are 
united; also in the details of the mouth 
parts, in the wings, and in other parts of 
the body. 


ia) 


10 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


In the youth of their race the efforts of 
the hymenopterous insects were directed 
toward the accomplishment of certain acts 
that others of the insect folk did not care 
to perform. 

The consequence of desires that pro- 
gressed as they were gratified, aided by 
environment, was the gradual develop- 
ment of the general characteristics of the 
hymenopteran Order. 

Again, in the early ancestral history 
of this Order, each division of it worked 
in a certain direction, pushed along by 
a combination of internal and external 
forces that finally resulted in the well- 
defined divisions of Bees, Ants, Wasps, 
etc., with characteristics more or less 
fixed. The wasps acquired the wasp 
form and the wasp. nature. Their 
habits were wasp habits. The bees 
forsook uncertain lines of conduct and 
settled into indisputable beedom. The 
ants drew lines fast and firm about 


INTRODUCTION 


1% 


their family form and habits, and thu 
separated themselves from all other hy- 
. menoptera. 

Early in their history there was no dis- 
. tinction between bees and wasps. There 
were no bees, no wasps. There were in- 
sects wavering, as it were, between becom- 
Ing bees or becoming wasps, and some of 
these, caring only for honey and pollen, in 
time crystallised into bees with the neces- 
sary structure and mind for procuring a 
living of pollen and honey. Others, more 
adventurous and more carnivorous in their 
appetites, crystallised finally into wasps, 
with their strength, ferocity, and skill in 
capturing living prey. 

It must not be supposed that the ten- 
dency toward beehood resulted in the 
development of but one form of bee. 
Though all the beeward-tending insects 
preferred pollen and honey, not all of 
them devised the same way of getting and 
using their pabulum. There developed one 


12 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


class of bees where the females made holes 
in the ground, and buried in each a ball of 
pollen, in which one egg was laid. 

In another class the female buried a 
mass of pollen in the ground, in which 
many eggs were laid. The young from 
these ate holes in the pollen mass and at 
length formed about themselves cocoons, 
which when vacated were stored with 
honey by the bees that did not abandon 
the nest, but continued to live in colonies 
or families. This is still the method of 
our bumble-bee whose race-childhood was 
not so clever, and who did not get so far 
along the road of progress as the hive bee. 
Some of the bumble-bees added wax to 
strengthen the covering to their nests and 
even to build more cells. But they still 
made primitive cup-shaped cells and it 
was left to the honey-bees to perfect the 
idea and construct waxen combs of hex- 
agonal cells to contain their young and 
their food. 


INTRODUCTION 


The bumble-bee, in producing a colony 
of workers to advance the interests of the 
family and help to rear a numerous pro- 
geny, took a long step ahead of the soli- 


tary little pollen-collector that makes a 


hole for each larva. 

But the bumble-bees die in the fall, — 
all but the perfect females, that live to start 
each one a separate nest next season. 

The hive bees took a long step in ad- 
vance of the bumble-bees when . they 
created a lasting colony, one which stored 
up provisions and survived the winter, 
ready to fly forth at the first sign of spring 
to continue the work of the hive, instead 
of having each year to start it from the 
foundation. 

The story of the bees is the story of the 
wasps. One class has stopped at the less 
intelligent stage of solitary existence, where 
the female digs a hole in the ground _ 
or otherwise constructs a nest, pro- y 
visions it, and lays her egg. y 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Another class has taken the important 
step of living in colonies, its colony in one 
respect resembling that of 
the bumble-bee rather than 
the highly organised com- 
munity of the hive bee. For 
3, the colony disappears at the 
Re See! SHAS close of the summer, only 

ee perfect females surviving to begin the 
circle again next season. 

The social wasps build combs of hexag- 
onal cells, like those of the bees. But 
instead of secreting wax for it, they manu- 
facture paper of wood-fibre ; and instead of 
standing the comb on its edge, most of 
them suspend it mouth down. 

How came bee and wasp to build a simi- 
lar comb of such different materials? And 
why does the wasp hang its comb mouth 
down where the bee stands its on edge ? 

Did all comb-makers originally hang 
their cells mouth down? And did the 
idea of storing honey cause the bee to 


INTRODUCTION 


change the position to prevent the honey 
from running out? 

To this day the queen-bee cells hang 
mouth down, and they are the only cells 
in the hive that never contain honey! 

Did the bee and the wasp get the 
idea of cell-making from some com- 
mon comb-building ancestor who had 
not yet differentiated into a true bee as 
or a true wasp; an ancestor wavering oe 
between paper and wax, some of whose 
descendants chose one and some the other; 
an ancestor wavering between pollen and 
insect food? 

Or did the comb-building habit arise after 
bees were bees and wasps wasps, —a like 
necessity resulting in a like construction ? 

One would like to turn back the pages 
of time for a glance at the primitive his- 
tory of these remarkable creatures, but the 
book is closed and locked, only the page 
of to-day being available to those who 
can read it. 


>= 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


From this page we learn that bees and 
wasps differ but very slightly from each 
other. 

Indeed a novice might find it hard to 
decide between certain insects, as to 
whether they were bees or wasps, were 
it not that bees being pollen-gatherers, 
have provided themselves with imple- 
ments for pollen-gathering; they are pe- 
culiarly hairy, while wasps, to whom 
collecting hairs would be a waste of pro- 
toplasm, have not clothed themselves with 
a pollen-collecting coat. 

They have no hair-baskets on their legs 
and no brushes on legs or body for 

-~ collecting pollen. 

They are longer and more slender than ~ 
bees, as a rule, and generally they wear a 
livery unlike that of the bees. Some of 
them have tongues for honey-gathering 
vying in length with the serviceable organ 
of the bee, and some of them, in tropical 


s 
| \ 


INTRODUCTION 


countries, build combs that are not sus- 
pended mouth down but are built in con- 
centric spheres, the position of most of 
the cells being more like that of the honey- 
comb than like the ordinary wasp-comb. 
Some of them store food in their cells, and 
with some this food is a true honey. 

Bees are probably the latest evolution in 
the insect world. 

The Order Hymenoptera, on the whole 
the most advanced of all Orders, is a late 
development according to the geological 
records, and in this Order the wasps pre- 


cede the beesintime,the mar- Ny 


vellous honey-makers being : 
the lastand the highest product \ ge 
of hymenopteran evolution. 

The wasps, in consequence 
of slight differences in their 
structure, have been artificially. separated 
into two families, the true wasps and the 
digger wasps. 

The true wasps can readily be distin- 

2 


18 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


guished by their wings, which are folded 
fan-like down the middle. 

The digger-wasps are all solitary, while 
some of the true wasps are solitary, and 
the rest, belonging to the family Vespide, 
are social. 

The Vespide live in communities and 
build a common habitation. There are 
three genera of them in the United States, 
one belonging to California, and the other 
two, Vespa and Polistes, to the country in 
general. 

To the genus Vespa belong the hornets 
and yellow-jackets. These build nests of 
paper, enclosed by thick paper walls. The 
hornets of this country generally suspend 
theirs from a tree-branch or the roof of a 
building, while many of the yellow-jackets 

+ prefer a hole in the ground, though 

Loh some species build, like the hornets, 
in the open air. 

@ Polistes builds also a paper nest, 


Z but she does not enclose her combs 
ALR by outer walls, as does Vespa. 


INTRODUCTION 


There are a great many species of soli- 
tary wasps in the United States, and they 
are very difficult to classify. They do not 
build nests of paper, but bore holes in the 
earth or in wood, or make nests 1n hollow 
stems, or build them of mud against the 
walls of buildings or under stones or on 
bushes. 

Wasps possess a more versatile, if lower, 
intelligence than bees. Bees have become 
cryStallised, as it were; their habits are 
formed; they have arrived at perfection 
along their line, and therefore are in a 
condition of suspended development. 

Not so wasps, — they have not arrived ; 
they are arriving. So, while bees stand 
highest structurally and socially, their 
communities organised and in working 
order from wax-secreting to honey-mak- 
ing, wasps are yet blazing a way through 
the unknown wilderness of wasp possi- 
bilities. They yet have their problems to 
solve and are yet to a far greater extent 


Scccaeestiaeslieicaieietieiehdaemieneiaistaieensiierioieeeeeeenenceteesiueieeemeaniandemmememeiemeetingiion=eememeememmntmememne enn ene 
20 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


than bees dependent upon their wits to 
see them safely through their little span 
of life. 

Although the solitary wasps are so 
numerous in species, the social wasps are 
those best known to literature. 

Like the bees, their strength lies in 
numbers. 

They make elaborate and wonder- 
fully ingenious habitations for them- 
selves, and rear their progeny under 
9g ,the influence of the home. They can 
ig/ thus accomplish results impossible to 
S\ creatures of solitary habits. 

‘y. The social wasps have always been 
S/ objects of interest, because objects of 
\,.. fear, to man. 
: ise One wasp may be ignored; not so 
fa, a thousand wasps. 
y They command attention and even 
prompt and energetic action when 
circumstances bring men in contact with 
them. 


INTRODUCTION 21 


|. VESPINA OR TRUE WASPS. 


Masaride 
aoey Eumenide 


Vespa 
Social-Vespide | Pls 
Polybia (California) 


Il. SPHECINA, FOSSORES, OR DIGGER- 
WASPS. | 


All solitary (many genera). 


Ae 


‘THE SOCIAL WASPS 
Bt: ae 
VESPIDE 


iz 
* 


Wasps and Their Ways 


VESPA, THE PAPER-MAKER. 


ESPA, the wasp, is an angrie crea- 
ture,” says an old writer. 
“Vespa, the wasp, IS an angry creature,” —~ 
Says every writer, old or new, who has / 
said anything about it. i 

One would think she did nothing from 
morning till night but sting. 

Listen to the Ettrick Shepherd, — 

“O’ a God’s creatures, the wasp is the 
only ane that’s eternally out o’ temper; 
there ’s nae sic thing as pleasin’ him.” 

Then he describes a pleasant scene in 
the garden with the birds and bees in the 
sunshine, and again bursts out, — 

“Amid the general dance and minstrelsy, 
in comes a shower o’ infuriate wasps, red 
hot, as if let out of a fiery furnace, pick- 


ing quarrels wi their ain shadows ; 
then roun’ and roun’ the hair o’ = a 
your head, bizzing against the AS 

25 ¥ ai 


a 


26 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


drum o your ear, dashing against the face 
o you, who are wishin’ ill to nae leevin’ 
thing ; and although you are engaged out 
to dinner, stickin’ a lang, poishoned stang 
in just beloe your ee, that afore you can 
run hame frae the garden swells up toa 
fearsome hicht, making you on that side 
look like a blackamoor, and on the oppo- 
site white as death; sae intolerable is the 
agony from the tail of the yellow imp that, 
according to his bulk, is stronger far than 
the dragon o’ the desert.” 

That is a spirited tribute to the tem- 
per of my lady the wasp, but she does 
not deserve it. Vespa is not angry ex- 
cepting when an honest wasp ought to 
be. | 

She will not endure having her nest torn 
down about her ears and her dear grubs 
and her eggs killed before her eyes. 

She falls into a fine rage when boys or 
other folk or animals whom she fears 
come close to her paper palace or stumble 


VESPA, THE PAPER-MAKER 


into her underground apartments with big, 
clumsy, all-destroying feet. 

Upon such occasions she is not merely 
angry, She is boiling mad, and pounces 
upon the offender regardless of his size, 
shape, or position in society. 

She is ready to fight against any odds, 
and never runs away. 

When people behave thus we call them 
brave. 

Wasps sting when they have to, or when 
they think they have to, and perhaps they 
are rather quick to decide that an intruder 
means mischief to them and theirs; but 
they are busy creatures, and when dis- 
turbed cannot waste time instituting a 
court of inquiry. 

They know the saving value of a pointed 
remark promptly made, that nobody can 
misunderstand or stop to argue about. 

Whoever loves wasps need not fear 
them; whoever does not had better keep 
away. 


a 


27 


28 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


They know when they are understood, 
and yield readily to the superior mind of 
man when it takes the trouble to undet- 
stand and control them. 

Pastor Muller in 1811 so mastered his 
wasps that he could handle their nest. He 
even cut it open as fast as they built it 
up, so that he might keep the inside part 
exposed to view and watch all the opera- 
tions. Sometimes he carried the nest 
away ; then, when the wasps that were out 
gathering food or nest-making materials 
came home, they sat in the empty hive 
where he usually kept their mutilated but 
still loved habitation, and waited patiently 
for him to bring it back. 

~The hornet is the largest and mee 
powerful of the social wasps, and 
the fame of her sting has gone 


acne abroad in all the lands of the earth. 


The hornet of this country may be 
known by her white face and by the 
white markings on her body. 


VESPA, THE PAPER-MAKER 29 


She is called Vespa Maculata, but in 
some parts of the Eastern States the big 
brown and yellow Vespa Crabro, or Euro- 
pean hornet, that likes to build in hollow 
trees, has found settlement. 

The yellow-jackets, as everybody ~a4, 
knows, are black, marked with bright (By 
yellow. AAS N 

They too are famed for their stings; /” ¥ © 
for, though they are smaller and weaker 
than the hornets, they possess courage 
and determination equal to their larger 
relatives, and the occupants of a well- 
stocked yellow-jacket’s nest under pro- 
vocation can put a man or a horse to. 
flight almost as quickly as can a nestful of 
angry hornets. 

There are several species of yellow- 
jackets, some scarcely larger than flies, 
some almost as large as hornets. They all 
resemble each other in general appearance, 
however, and their habits are essentially 
the same as those of the hornets. 


30 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Indeed the yellow-jackets and hornets 
are so much alike that it is necessary to 
make the acquaintance of but one to know 


both. 
N 
* 


HAVING EYES, THEY SEE. 


LTHOUGH the Vespe have formed 

violent attachments to most of 

us at one time or another, so that we may 

consider ourselves fairly well acquainted 

with them, our attention has been mainly 

directed to their sting end and to their 
general personal appearance. 

We know Vespa, but few of us have 
given much thought to her eyes, though 
those bright orbs were no doubt respon- 
sible for the success with which she at- 
tached herself without invitation to our 
persons. 

Besides the two compound eyes with 
which we are all familiar she has a group 
of three simple ones, which she, like the 
cyclops, wears in the middle of her fore- 
head, but which by no means afford her 

31 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


cyclopean vision. Indeed, many writers 
deny to them any serviceable function 
whatever. They allow them a certain 
sensitiveness to light, but that is all. 

If it is true, as seems probable, that 
these three little eyes, or ocelli, are an 
heirloom from Vespa’s distant but very 
important ancestor the worm, then we can 
permit her to wear them merely as orna- 
ments, or as glistening reminders of the 
time when she was a plastic worm with the 
glorious possibility of becoming a winged 
and a stinged creature. 

But while one so readily accepts the 
judgment of the scientists on the ocelli, it 
is another matter when they declare the 
compound eyes also to be very inferior 
visual organs, able at the best to give but 
an impression of light, of color, and of 
moving objects. The compound eyes of 
insects are a later development than the 
ocelli; they are complex in structure and 
are always present, excepting where the 


mevinG EYES, THEY SEE 


habits of the insect make eyesight un- 
necessary. They are composed of many 
simple eyes or facets grouped solidly to- 
gether. Since these complex eyes have 
been developed at much cost, it is not un- 
reasonable to conclude they are for pur- 
poses of seeing; nor may it be wholly rash 
to suggest that they may be even better 
organs of vision than those possessed by 
man, —a conclusion our vanity might 
make it hard for us to accept. 

Certainly insects act.as if they saw, and 
saw well, as when young bees, leaving the 
hive for the first time, fly close to it facing 
it, and do not go away until they have 
apparently located its position and learned 
to recognise it at sight. 

Wasps, too, when leaving prey to which 
they wish to return, act as if they were 
locating the place, as they fly about care- 
fully examining the neighbourhood before 
leaving, and when they wish to return are 
able to find the exact spot, unless mean- 

3 


34 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


time some conspicuous landmark has been 
changed, as by the removal of a large leaf, 
or a twig, or by the trampling down or 
cutting away of the grass, when 
they are as confused as human 
beings would be under the same 
>. 4yycircumstances, and sometimes are 
unable to find the place at all. 

Predatory insects, again, have 
very large eyes, and are able to 
distinguish the particular insect 
they want, even at long range. 

And any one who has hunted 
the large fossorial wasps among 
the goldenrod cannot doubt that these 
wary insects see the approach of their 
would-be captor. 

A tame yellow-jacket kept under a 
tumbler immediately turned its head and 
pointed its antenne at the approach of its 
keeper. Its gesture irresistibly suggested 
that it had seen the person coming; and 
the performances of the digger-wasps 


HAVING EYE6, (THEY SEE 35 


when one is sitting near their holes would 
lead to the conclusion that they can see, 
and see well, if eyes are eyes in insectdom, 
and if gestures mean there what they do 
with us. 

Each of Vespa’s compound eyes con- 
tains several hundred hexagonal facets, : 
and they doubtless enable her to see long Bey z 
distances, as she is exceedingly swift, ay 
strong, and direct in her flight. Unlike 
the honey bees, she has no hairs between 
the facets of her eyes. 

A white or yellow semilunar line cuts 
her compound eyes partly in two above 
the antenne. Her forehead seems to in- 
fringe upon her eye-space indeed, and by 
thus cutting into her eyes gives her lady- 
ship a very decorative front. 

The faces of wasps vary greatly in ap- 
pearance, the shield-like “clypeus” above 
the jaws being coloured and shaped differ- 


Z 


Yi, 
<9 


en. 
7 * 


36 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ently in different species, so that by their 
faces they are known, one method of 
classification being founded on the facial 
markings. Wasps quickly distinguish 
colours. This has been proved by put- 
ting papers of different colours over the 
entrance holes to the nests of the ground 
wasps and watching what happened. Red 
paper, with a hole for the wasps to go 
through, was put over a nest and occa- 
sioned great excitement, but in the course 
of about three hours the wasps became 
accustomed to their decorative doorway 
and went in and out through it as though 
that had always been their habit. 

When the red paper was exchanged for 
blue the wasps were as excited as before, 
though they more quickly became accus- 
tomed to it. | 

When the wasps had become used to 
going in and out through the blue paper 
a number of them were caught, the 
blue paper was removed, and the wasps 


wevING EYES, THEY SBE 


were liberated. Missing their blue land- 
mark they buzzed confusedly about, not 
knowing how to find the nest, until the 
blue paper was replaced, when they all 
went in. 

Once, red paper having been left over 
the nest for twenty-four hours and then 
moved a foot and a half away, many wasps 
went through the hole in the paper as 
usual, doubtless expecting to find the 
nest entrance underneath it. 

The coloured papers were frequently 
changed, and the wasps finally learned to 
look for these changes, so that fewer and 
fewer were deceived. 

Which proves that wasps are capable of 
being educated, and suggests a new field 
of experiment. 

A nest of trained hornets might not be 
attractive to everybody, but it would be 
interesting. 

The wasps, having learned to expect 
different coloured paper porticos, were 


37 


38 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


se ~Ssifially deceived by having the 
oe Son paper removed entirely! 
Not a wasp recognised its hole 


until the paper was replaced, when 
Re ow they went tumbling in six or seven 


~ at a time. 


WITHOUT EARS, THEY HEAR ; 


WITHOUT NOSES, THEY SMELL; AND WITHOUT 
TONGUES, THEY CONVERSE. 


LL of which is possible because they 

possess antenne, the most remark- 

able organs of special sense, all things con- 
sidered, in the world. 

These sensitive feelers have their origin 
between Vespa’s eyes, and are necessary to 
her existence as well as to her personal 
appearance. 

She would look as unfinished without 
them as a man would without his ears or 
nose; and may it not be that in hor- 
net-Iand the handsomest hornets and yo 
yellow-jackets are those distinguished by 
the beauty of these flexible organs ? 

The wasp’s antennz are like those of the 
bee in structure, each one having a short, 


stiff handle, or “scape,” and a long, flexible 
39 


40 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


tip, or “flagellum.” The scape moves 
freely at its point of union with the face, 
by a round ball-and-socket joint, and so 
serves to change the position of the flagel- 
lum, which is composed of numerous 
small joints covered with hearing and 
smelling organs of microscopic size. 

At least we suppose they are so covered. 

Curious little sense-organs certainly 
there are on the antenne, and just as cer- 

‘tainly the antenne are the organs of 
>) scent,—though it may not be quite so” 

evident they are also organs of hearing. 
However, it is believed they are. - 
There are eleven short joints in the 
\ flagellum of the female wasp, and twelve 
in that of the male. 

Besides the organs of hearing and of 
smell, the antennz bear a great number of 
Short tactile hairs which are so sensitive 
that their little owners are doubtless able 
by means of them to discover the shapes 
and qualities of objects much more accu- 


WITHOUT EARS, THEY HEAR 


AA 


rately than we could discover them by our 
blunter sense of touch. 

Without the antenne the wasp would 
be deprived of the power of finding its 
food and of doing its work, and would 
soon perish. It has a keen sense of smell 
where food is concerned, and quickly 
finds a savoury morsel by scent alone, as 
has been proven by concealing meat near 
its nest. 

By means of the antenne the wasps, 
like the bees, communicate with one 
another. 

When two meet they at once question 
each other with their antenne; if from 
the same nest, the newest comer is invited 
to share the honey it probably holds in its 
stomach, and this it is generally willing to 
do. If not from the same nest the Vespe 
generally retreat from each other without 
the formality of a duel, in this respect 
showing a much more peaceable nature 
than bees, for two bees meeting are very 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


apt to fight at once, if they happen to 
belong to different hives. 
42. Nasps do not seem to communi- 
EEN cate to one another, as bees cer- 
tainly do at times, the discovery 
of food; very likely because the 
wasps are not in the habit of finding 
large stores in one place. Each wasp 
hunts its own insect or finds its own 
flower-cup without feeling any responsi- 
bility towards its nest-mates. 

Although the wasp has no_ separate 
honey-sac like that of the bee, it has a 
stomach in which it can carry quite a large 
drop of honey, and this honey it can 
regurgitate. 

Some species of wasps store a sort of 
honey in their combs, but it is a very poor 
substitute for the glorious nectar of the 
hives; and in Brazil a certain wasp manu- 
factures a honey dangerous to eat, as it 
occasions dizziness and sharp pains in the 
stomach. 


WITHOUT EARS, THEY HEAR 


43 


“The naturalist Auguste Saint-Hilaire, 
during his sojourn in Brazil, himself 
experienced ill-effects from eating it.” 

Hornets and yellow-jackets are fond of 
sweets, and when a captive Vespa is given 
honey or syrup the office of the antenne 
is at once apparent. These delicate threads 
are turned towards the inviting delicacy, 
they are gently waved and tilted and 
balanced as her ladyship moves nearer and 
nearer, until the delicate tips finally touch 
the object of interest; all doubt as to its 
nature vanishes, and Vespa at once forgets 
the sorrows of captivity in long, delightful 
draughts. 

Whoever longs for the fellowship of 
wasps can make their acquaintance and 
watch their actions with perfect safety by 
confining them in a cage made of a card- 
board box without a cover and with large 
openings cut in the sides, the whole coy- 
ered by wire netting. The care they need 
is nothing compared to the pleasure and 


44 


“WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


instruction they may afford, as a daily dewy 
leaf to drink from, and a lump of moist 
sugar to stay the pangs of hunger are all 
the attention they require. The occupants 
for these cages are caught with an insect 
net on the flowers the wasps frequent. 

Such Vespe become quite tame, and as, 
unlike bees, they do not sting strangers of 
their own kind, any number can be safely 
put together in the same cage. 


a Se 


WASP-FLOWERS. 


HE wasps love the flowers, and from 

. early spring to late fall may be seen 
flying about them. 

They appear to be very exclusive in 
their tastes, as they are found upon only a 
few plants, whereas bees may 
be found upon almost anything > 
that blossoms. This is not 2X3 


Sy 
Als 
mie 
iy 


due to a capricious appetite, but 
doubtless to the size of the tongue, 
for the little flat ligula of the hornets 
and yellow-jackets cannot reach , 
to the nectary of most flowers. 
The wasp is a philosopher, however, 
who does not waste power worrying over 
delectable sweets just out of reach. 
“Go to!” it seems to say; “there are 
other flowers, more generous and with 


equally dainty sweets ;’’ and these it seeks 
45 


(g 


46 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


and joyfully rifles, turning no longing 
gaze towards the honeyful spurs and cups 
not open to its enjoyment. 

There are certain flowers that may be 
justly called wasp-flowers, because the 
head of the wasp and the cup of the 
flower fit each other so prettily. One of 
these is the figwort. There are two species 
of this odd plant in our country, the Mary- 
land figwort, which blossoms later and 
grows larger, and the early smaller Hare 
figwort. 

These are common weeds that might be 
passed a thousand times without notice, 
because the flowers are small and incon- 
spicuous, but when one knows they are 
wasp-flowers they at once become more 
interesting. 

The figwort grows abundantly where it 
does grow, and in good soil the larger 
species attains a height of eight or ten 
feet, though it is usually from three to 
five feet tall. 


: 


: 


WASP-FLOWERS 


The figwort is quite a charming plant, 
when one stops to look at it; its clusters 
of small purple-green flowers, light and 
airy on their slender stems making a 
pretty pattern against the sky. But the 
principal interest attaching to it is in the 
shape and size of its blossoms. 

These little green and purple urns are 
just large enough to receive the head and 
chest of a hornet or yellow-jacket, and 
when the little creatures fit themselves 
into its accommodating bosom they find 
its nectar neither hidden nor to be reached 
only through long and slender tubes, 
as is the case with so many bee-flowers. 

No, this figwort nectar lies within easy 
reach at the bottom of the little / 
urn, ready to yield itself abundantly ¢ ih 
to the short flat tongues of hungry “+ 
hornets and yellow-jackets. And 
about these flowers on sunny days ~ 
the hornets and yellow-jackets can 
always be found. 


48 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Bees too visit them, for their honey is 
abundant, and the bees find them, notwith- 
standing their dull colours, quite as readily 
as do the wasps. 

But there are many wasps to one bee 
about the figworts, which at that season 
of the year are often the only flowers in 
bloom that yield tribute to wasps, while 
the bees can satisfy themselves at other 
fountains. 

The figwort isa cunning schemer, whose 
dainty green or purple urns do not stand 
filled with nectar with no other purpose 
than the pleasure of the wasps and bees. 
They go to it for honey, and this it gra- 
ciously gives, then makes them the bearers 
of its pollen grains. To it they bring 
pollen from neighbouring figworts; from 
it they bear pollen. 

The figwort holds its ripened visti forth 
in the passage-way to its banquet hall, and 
whoever enters must brush the ready 
stigma. Thus, sooner or later, it is sure 


WASP-FLOWERS 


to receive the pollen it desires from its 
distant neighbours. 

Once dusted with pollen the pistil turns 
down out of the way over the lower lip 
of the urn, and the stamens then present 
themselves, ripe and ready to dust the 
honey-seekers with plenteous pollen to 
be carried to neighbouring figworts. 

This service of pollen-carrying the wasps 
must perform, whether they like it or not, 
—and they do not seem to like it, for 
wasps do not gather pollen for food as 
do bees, and it is only a nuisance to them. 

They often stop to brush it off, but 
enough grains cling to them to serve the 
purpose of the flowers visited. 

The figwort has a hood over its head 
formed by the borders of the upper petals; 
and this is one of the prettiest things 
about it. 

The wasp goes in under this hood, 
which rises as the bud unfolds, and re- 


veals the opening to the flower urn. 
4 


49 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Moreover, when it rains the flower 
droops a little on its stem, and the hood 
also draws forward slightly, so as to pro- 
tect the precious contents of the urn — 
the nectar and pollen—from the rain. 

When the sun shines the flower straight- 
ens up, aS does also the hood. 

In figwort season the laurel too opens, 
and then do the mountains of its choice 
blossom like gardens. The observer looks 
with amazed admiration upon undulating 
banks of solid bloom walling in the path 
he treads. Through the openings in these 
banks, slopes in the distance shine white 
as snow or glow rosy red. The wilder 
the mountain, the mightier its outburst of 
laurel beauty. 

The shallow cups of the flowers invite 
the approach of the wasps, who also fre- 
quent the safe recesses of the mountains, 
where to the branches of the trees they 
hang their paper homes. 

The laurel is not specially a wasp-flower, 


WASP-FLOWERS 51 


though these insects seek its easily reached 
nectar upon occasion, and no doubt are 
valuable agents in carrying the pollen 
which the laurel conceals in a curious 
and very ingenious manner until the time 
of its ripening. The stamens are bent 
over like springs, the anthers being caught 
in little pockets or depressions in the 
corolla. | 

When the wasp seeks nectar its restless 
legs loosen the ‘stamen springs, and up fly 
the anthers, throwing pollen as out of a 


sling, often quite over the bush mm OY 
to a neighbouring plant, and di (: all vac 
often against the body of the Se . 
wasp, that, after being pelted as I : 5 

: \ ee 


with pollen, is in a condition 
to cross-fertilise the next laurel 
flower it visits. 

The Alleghany Menzesia is 
a plant the wasps delight in. 
It belongs to the Heath Family, 
and has a bush like an azalea, 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


but flowers like those of a huckleberry, 
though larger. 

Indeed these flowers are just large 
enough to allow the hungry Vespa to get 
her head into the nectar stored at the bot- 
tom of the little flower urn. 

The Menzesia grows in the Alleghany 
Mountains, and one lovely mountain top 
in Virginia in the spring is covered with 
beautiful bushes of it, every flower 
cluster having its little band of wasp 
votaries. | 

The pretty snowberry blossoms _ that 
make charming the northern mountains 
are also wasp flowers. This dainty little 
plant creeps over mossy banks, and in May 
and June puts forth the small white 
flowers that are succeeded by snowy ber- 
ries having a flavour of birch. 

The pretty bell-shaped blossoms are of 
the right size to accommodate the head of 
Vespa, and she has the good taste to be 
fond of snowberry honey. 


ALLEGHANY MENZESIA 


WASP-FLOWERS 


53 


The sweet-clover also yields its deli- 
cious nectar to the short tongues of the 
hornets and yellow-jackets,—a fact of 
which they are not slow to take advan- 
tage, as the visitors buzzing about the 
sweet-clover beds that line many roadsides 
bear witness. 

Vespa enjoys the goldenrods too, and in 
the fall of the year may be captured quite 
easily as she buries her face in the polleny 
masses, oblivious for once to whoever may 
be coming near with suspended net and 
evil intent. 

It is commonly said that wasps are 
attracted to flowers having a disagreeable 
or meat-like odour. 

This may be true to some extent, though 
it seems probable that the structure of the 
flower has more influence upon the visits 
of wasps than the odour. Certain flies do 
prefer ill-smelling flowers, and the wasps, 
finding the nectar of these flat-topped 
blooms obtainable by their short tongues, 


54 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


may visit them also, though they by no 
means confine their attention to such. 

They may not be quite as dainty as 
the bees in their choice of food, but it is 
a libel to accuse them of preferring ill- 
smelling blossoms if they can find sweet 
ones. 

They are very fond of honey, syrup, and 
all sweets, and eagerly suck the sap from 
bleeding trees in the spring of the year. 

Like the bees they have a weakness for 
fermented drinks, and they are immoral 
enough to abandon themselves to what- 
ever satisfaction comes from intoxication, 
eagerly drinking sweet wine, or sugar and 
water containing alcoholic liquor. If their 
drink is but sweet enough they Joyfully 
imbibe until they are quite drunk. They 
frequent nature’s wine-shops too, drinking 
the juices of fermented fruits, and after an 
orgy under a tree whose over-ripe fruit 
strews the ground, they may be seen lying 
around in a state of helpless drunkenness. 


WASP-FLOWERS 


As they recover they stagger about in a 
feeble and tipsy manner absurdly suggest- 
ive of the members of a higher race when 
in the same unfortunate condition. 

Their misdoings do not prevent their 
being valuable to the plant world. Prob- 
ably they are important fertilising agents 
to all flowers whose nectar their tongues 
can reach, and it is known that several 
plants are entirely dependent upon them 
for cross-fertilisation. 

The tongue of Vespa, the wasp, differs 
very much in structure from that of Apis, 
the bee, for the Apis’ tongue is modified 
into a long, sucking proboscis, while the 
mouth organs of Vespa are not very much 
specialised. The upper lip folds down 
and hides the tongue when the latter is 
at rest. Below the upper lip is a por- 
tion which consists of a four-parted 
tongue and two feelers, one on each side. 
Underneath this are two horny parts, which 
bear each a feeler. 


"EFF 


55 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


The feelers probably aid the wasp in 
exactly locating, and perhaps in deciding 
the quality of, its food. The tongue asa 


whole enables it to lick up easily reached 
liquids, but it is quite unable to reach con- 
cealed or distant nectar. 

When not in use the tongue is drawn 
in and back, where it fits in a groove be- 
hind the head. When in use it appears as 
a little flat tongue, so like that of a dog in 
motion and appearance, as one watches it 
at a distance, that one is surprised and de- 

lighted with the first view of a 


ee 
Ip wasp dining in captivity. It is very 
ai KC difficult to see it dining excepting 


in captivity, as the social wasps are 
usually so wary that one cannot get near 
enough to watch them on the flowers out- 


WASP-FLOWERS 


of-doors. In nest-making time, however, 
when they are engaged in cutting up in- 
sects or bits of meat for transportation 
they become so oblivious to the rest of the 
world that one can not only watch them 
at short range, but even clip their wings. 


57 


VESPA’S FOOD SUPPLY 


HILE in the spring and early sum- 
mer Vespa lives largely upon 
nectar, she is not at all conservative upon 
the food question. All is fish that comes 
to her net. She is decidedly omnivorous, 
even enjoying cooked food when she can 
get it. She often flies into dining-rooms 
and kitchens and helps herself to what she 
finds ; an informal assumption of unoffered 
hospitality that gives her more pleasure 
than any one else concerned. 

Later in the season she sucks other 
people’s fruit juice with the same opti- 
mistic disregard of property rights, and 
with her sharp jaws cheerfully punctures 
and then eats the choicest spot on the 
juiciest, ripest, and best fruit. thatthe 
orchard affords. 

The best is none too good for a wasp, 


she believes, and lives up to her faith. 
58 


meeor aA oS FOOD:SUPPLY 


The fruit-grower thinks otherwise and 
looks with eyes of wrath upon the white- 
_ and-black, or yellow-and-black imps that 
ruin his best fruit and sting him if he 
presumes to interfere. 

Sometimes the wasps eat all the pulp 
from a specially attractive fruit, though 
too often their epicurean tastes are con- 
tent only with the best of a pear or an 
apple, taking out enough to spoil it and 
leaving the rest. Almost every one has 
had the experience of picking up what 
looked like a perfect pear or apple and 
finding it a mere shell filled with wasps. 
Such an apple was once given a shake, 
when out through the single hole that 
gave entrance to the interior came a tail 
wildly brandishing a sting, ready for busi- 
ness. After the tail came the rest of the 
wasp, who, once fairly out, flew about her 
affairs without molesting the hand_ that 
held the apple. After this successful exit 
came another tail brandishing a fiery dart, 


60 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


and after this another and another, until a 
dozen or more wasps had sallied forth tail 
first in a triumphant, touch-me-if-you-dare 
procession. 

Since the cause of their disturbance was 
out of sight the clever wasps, fearing to 
come out head first and thus put them- 
selves at disadvantage to a possible foe, 
preferred the exercise of military tactics 
that though simple were sufficient. 

Vespa requires strong jaws, for with 
them she does most of the hard work of 

a wasp’s life, from cutting up solid 
YoY toot to chewing wood fibre into paper 
pulp for nest-building purposes. 

And they are strong, large, toothed and 
horny in substance, joined to the sides 
of the head below the eyes, and, as is usual 
in insects, working sideways. 

She likes to vary her diet of fruits and 
sweets with an occasional insect, which 


Peo AS: POOD) SUPPLY 


she is very skilful in catching. She is 
particularly fond of flies, though nothing 
seems to come amiss, and she bears out 
her reputation of liking  ill-smelling 
food by devouring the malodorous white 
cabbage butterfly and the offensive earwig, 
both of which are left ‘severely alone by 
even the hungriest of insectivorous birds. 
She also likes raw meat, to which she will- 
ingly helps herself from the butcher’s shop, 
without troubling him to wait on her. 
The butcher ought to welcome her, as the 
small amount of meat she consumes is 
more than paid for in the large number 
of flies she catches, thus protecting him 
from one of the greatest nuisances he has 
to contend with. But butchers are not 
always grateful for their blessings, and one 
once clipped the wings of the wasps en- 
gaged in carrying off his meat, to punish 
them for the theft. Never before had 
they been obliged to face such an emer- 
gency, and finding themselves unable to 


> 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


fly, their wasp minds, searching for a cause 
and relying upon past experience to sup- 
ply it, naturally concluded they had carved 
out too heavy a steak, and they set to work 
cutting their pieces of meat smaller and 
smaller. Poor little fellows! What hap- 
pened when the fragments had been reduced 
to the smallest possible size and the wings 
still refused to perform their office, the 
record does not state, but surely there was 
material for tragedy in the annals of 
waspdom. 

Besides eating animal food herself, 
Vespa carries it home to feed the larve in 
the nest. 

Wasps doubtless deserve far more credit 
than they usually get for their services as 
fly-catchers. Mr. Wood, in his “Homes 


_ without Hands,” tells of pigs lying in the 


warm sunshine covered with flies which 

wasps pounced upon and carried away. 
Another observer watched wasps catch- 

ing flies on two cows, and in twenty min- 


ReoPraA’sS FOOD SUPPLY 


utes saw between three and four hundred 
snatched off. 

It is to be hoped the cows were properly 
grateful. 

In some parts of our own country, farm- 
ers wives are reported to have taken 
advantage of the wasp’s well-known fond- 
ness for flies by hanging a wasp’s-nest in 
the house. Doubtless such a fly-trap, with 
a little care and patience, would work 
admirably, as wasps readily make friends 
of people whom they are in the habit of 
seeing close to their nests, and who do 
not molest them. However, the present 
writer does not seriously recommend the 
practice as a substitute for window-screens 
and fly-poison. 

No doubt the wasps do a. great, 
though unrecognised service, in keeping 
the flies in check, as was once proved on 
an estate in England, where all the female 
wasps were hunted and killed one spring 
before they had a chance to start their 


64 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


nests. The wasps were sacrificed in order 
to save the fruit in the fall from their 
depredations. The fruit was spared, but 
for two years the estate ‘‘ was infested, like 
Egypt, with a plague of flies.” 

Doubtless wasps are valuable scavengers 
in hot countries, where they are very 
numerous, and where they have been 
known to consume large quantities of 
refuse, and even to keep the butchers’ 
stalls sweet and clean. In our country 
the wasps that live near human habitations 
do their share as scavengers. Once these 
little insect vultures were observed to clean 


the bones of a dead mouse in 
. two days. | 

: hE An interesting writer in a 
“ * /(¥%— British periodical tells of sitting 
in the open air and being visited by wasps 

that wished to share his lunch. The first 

day they were some time finding the lunch- 

bag, but the next day they recognised it 

and their entertainer, and were on hand 


VESPA’S FOOD "SUPPLY 


clustered on the bag ready for the feast 
before there was time to undo the strap. 
Some bread and jelly and a small piece 
of bacon and butter were hung on the 
hedge to lure away the rather inconveni- 
ent guests, and these things they caused 
to disappear,—all but a small piece of 
hard bread. 

The same observer found a great differ- 
ence in wasps near dwellings and those 
living in the deep woods. The latter 
took no interest in lunch-bags, not hav- 
ing had experience with food prepared 
by man, and they were not inclined to 
make the acquaintance of their human 
guest. Those living by the roadside, 
however, visited him as he sat painting, 
getting on his collar and his arm and 
even allowing him to stroke them gently 
on the back. 

Indeed wasps differ as much as cats in 
their habits of friendliness. One cannot 


make friends with a puss that has run wild 
5 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


in the woods, perhaps was born in the 
hollow of a tree, as one can with a house- 
hold pet. Neither do the wasps of the 
forest become friendly like those of the 
wayside. 

A yellow-jacket’s nest was once built in 
the ground on a vacant lot in a large city. 
People constantly passed within three feet — 
of it, and mischievous boys had stoned the 
entrance to the nest until there was a little 
mound of stones to mark the spot. The 
wasps rushed out when stoned and stung 
the boys, but they never molested a 
passer-by under ordinary circumstances. 
Indeed one could stand close to the nest 
and watch them hurrying in and out, 
whizzing past one’s head back and forth, 
showing no resentment and paying no 
attention to their visitor. 

If one wishes the sensation of taking a 
live hornet in the hand, it can be safely 
done by putting a drop of syrup on the 
end of the finger and offering it to a 


¥VESPA’“S FOOD SUPPLY 


67 


hungry caged hornet. One should move 
gently, slowly, invitingly, and her lady- 
ship, forgetting all cause for resentment 
in the joy of discovering food, will 
climb in a friendly way upon the offered 
finger; and no wasp is ever dastardly 
enough to sting a finger upon which it 
voluntarily and in a calm frame of mind 
has climbed, that is, unless it becomes 
frightened before it leaves of its own 
accord. 

It is never safe to frighten hornets. 

Sometimes her ladyship finds the warm 
finger attractive for its own sake, and par- 
ticularly on a chilly day will sit contentedly 
panting her abdomen after the syrup is 
eaten and the holder is quite ready to end 
the experiment and return the wasp to her 
cage. 

This can be done by gently placing a 
slip of paper in front of her and shoving 
her off the finger, or if the nerve fails, a 
quick flip will safely dislodge her. 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


In dealing with hornets the main thing 
is to be perfectly calm and self-possessed. 
A nervous thrill of fear seems to be com- 
municated by some occult process to 
Vespa’s nerve centres as well, and a fright- 
ened hornet is always a fighting hornet. 


LEGS AND WINGS 


IX is the allotted number of legs in the 
insect world, and this number has 
Vespa. They, with her wings, are borne 
by the compact thorax, whose value in in- 
sectdom is principally for affording points 
of attachment to the organs of progression, 
and a place of support for the muscles that 
move those organs. 

Like the bees, the wasps are eternally 
making their toilet. 

Vespa, like a neat old tabby-cat, washes 
her face and hands with her tongue. She 
puts her paws, so to speak, in her mouth 
and licks them clean, then while they are 
presumably still damp, she draws them 
over her head, turning that important part 
of her diminutive person this side and that, 
very much as puss does when performing 


the same office. 
69 


70 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Vespa cleans her wings, thorax, and 
abdomen with her legs, like a bee, but she 
is not so particular about her hinder parts 

oN pays as is my lady the bee. It 

is not necessary, aS she is a 

Ps re ae hard and _ polished person, 

a \ f encumbered with but few 

a ee hairs, and those not of a 
o. dust-catching structure. 

Her precious antenne receive a great 
deal of attention, and, like the bee, she has 
implements on purpose to clean them. 

Her antenna cleaners, though not so 
well-finished as those of the bee, resemble 
them in structure. 

In the bend of the fourth and fifth joints 
of each foreleg is the cleaner. 

It consists of a little flattened prong or 
valve hanging from near the lower end of 
the fourth joint and of a curved groove at 
the upper end of the fifth joint. 


This groove is fitted with a circle of 
teeth. 


LEGS AND WINGS 


When the antenna is to be cleaned, the 
leg is raised above it, the antenna is slipped 
along until it rests in the groove, then the 
leg is flexed, the valve or prong fits down 
over the antenna, and as the latter is pulled 


one side, and the teeth of the groove 
on the other, clean it perfectly. 

Vespa is particularly fond of exer- 
cising these clever little arrangements 
for keeping the antennz in order, and 
whenever she is at rest may be seen 
giving frequent dabs at her face, first one 
side and then the other, each time drawing 
an antenna through its cleaner. She seems 
to do it unconsciously while she sits medi- 
tating, as some people pull their moustaches 
or twist their hair. Occasionally she makes 
a careful and prolonged toilet, scraping 
and pulling her antenne many times in 
succession. 

Besides these admirable instruments for 
toilet purposes, there is a pair of sharp 


through, the edges of the valve on os 
K 


' 


te. 


72 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


prongs on the lower end of the fifth joint © 
of Vespa’s middle and hind legs, and these 
are used in cleaning the legs and wings. 
The wasp is very skilful with them, evi- 
dently understanding perfectly their value 
as articles of the toilet. 

Otherwise Vespa’s legs are not remark- 
able. She does not use them for pollen 
gathering, and so lacks the pollen-collecting 
implements of the bee, and she does not 
use them to any great extent in nest- 
building, — that important and interesting 
work being performed principally by her 
jaws and tongue. 

Vespa goes whizzing through the world 
propelled by wings that in themselves do 
not appear capable of sustaining her weight 
in the air. Nor were they capable but 
for the powerful motor that impels them 
with such force and skill that they are 
apparently able to defy the attraction of 
gravitation, and spurning the earth bear 
her aloft in the air. 


iS, f ; Ze : 


LEGS AND WINGS 73 


The power that gives them their great 
force is found in certain thoracic muscles 
that throw the wings into suchSSSsee<<=— 
rapid vibrations they are able to a LE 
play the part of aérial propellers, p 
and away goes Vespa, merrily humming as 
she speeds along. 

In structure and movement the wing's 
of the wasp are similar to those of the 
bee. : 

Like the bee, she has four of them, two 
on either side of the thorax and attached 
about half-way from the head to the abdo- 
men, — attached, one may be sure, at the 
point best to maintain the balance of the 
body when it is held suspended in the air. 

The front wing is the larger, and the 
two are attached close together. 

That these two wings may effectually 
act as one, they are, like the bee’s wings, 
hooked together. Along the 
upper edge of the ower 


wing toward its outer mar- 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


gin, is a row of hooks that fit into a groove 
running along the under edge of the upper 
wing. 

When the hooks are caught in the 
groove the wings are so closely locked 
together that the two look and act like 
one. 

The wings of the true wasps differ from 
those of the diggers and of the bees by 
being folded, fan-like, down the middle. 

This fold occurs in the large wings, and 
when the wasp is at rest with her fans 
closed she has an exceedingly slender and 
elegant-looking pair of wings lying along 
the sides of her body. 

This lengthwise folding of the wings is 
convenient when Vespa crawls about the 
narrow spaces of her nest, and it more 
effectually disposes of them when they are 
not wanted than the bee’s method of un- 
hooking hers and slipping the under ones 
out of the way below the upper ones. 
Vespa does not seem to unhook her wings 


LEGS AND WINGS 


when at rest, but folds the under ones over 
at the joint without unhooking them. So 
her wing is in reality folded together like 
a little fan of three “ sticks.” 

Vespa hums as she flies, the sound 
being due to the rapid vibrations of her 
wings. At home, however, she is silent, 
her nest is not buzzing with happy in- 
dustry; it is quiet with happy industry, 
and even when disturbed gives forth no 
such threatening murmur as pours from 
a disturbed bee-hive. There is excite- 
ment enough within, however, and out 
rush the frightened occupants, as eager 
to inflict punishment as though they had 
been as noisy in their wrath as their 
relatives. 

When a wasp flies about one’s face in 
an angry frame of mind it buzzes with 
loud vehemence, but as a community the 
Vespe rage in silence. 

Like the bee, the wasp has a voice besides 
that made by the wing vibrations. If she 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


is held between the thumb and forefinger 
by the thorax, the operator being careful 
what she is doing with her sting end 
meantime, a very distinct vibration of the 
whole thorax is felt. Indeed the head and 
the upper part of the legs share these curi- 
ous motions, and a high-keyed buzzing is 
heard even when the wings are not moved 
at all. 

Like the bee the wasp’s “spiracles” or 
openings to the air-cavities in thorax and 
abdomen contain vocal organs, particularly 
those in the thorax, and when these are 
thrown into vibration they give rise to the 
shrill outcry of the captured insect. In 
the air-cavities of thorax and abdomen the 
blood is aérated as our own Is in our 
lungs. 

Concerning Vespa’s voice, Moffett, an 
early English writer, in his entertaining 
“Theatre of Insects,’ says, — 

“They make a sound as Bees do, but 
more fearful, hideous, terrible, and whistel- 


LEGS AND WINGS 77 


ing, especially when they are provoked to 
wrath.” 

Evidently Mr. Moffett had had experi- 
ence of them when “ provoked to wrath,” 
and possibly the memory of their stings 
made him think ill of their voices. 


Ke 


VESPA’S STING 


ESPA’S abdomen is joined to the 
thorax by a very slender attachment, 
though this is not apparent to the casual 
observer, as the broad, blunt end of the 
abdomen usually conceals the slight thread 
by which it is held in place, and makes the 
wasp look like a much stouter and 
% 4, more substantially built creature 
' SY than she is. The true form shows 
best in a dead Vespa, which 1s 
usually curled up. 

Moffett says in his quaint way, — 

“The body of the Wasp seemeth to be 
fastened and tyed together to the midst 
of the breast, with a certain thin, fine 
thread or line, so that by this disjoyned, 
and not well compacted composition, they 
seem very feeble in their loins or rather to 
have none at all.” 


78 


VESPA’S STING 79 


Most of the wasp’s organs of digestion 
are packed away in the abdomen, and here 
is the capacious stomach. At the tip of 
the abdomen is the wasp’s_ serviceable 
weapon which is also, in the queen, the 
ovipositor or egg-placer. 

The wasp, like the bee, carries its sting 
in its tail, or, as Moffett vividly expresses 
it, “Their tayle is armed with a long, 
stiffe and exceeding venomous sting,”’ 
and concerning the efficiency of this 
weapon there is but one opinion. ~~ 

From early ages to the present time the 
“fiery darts of the wasps” have furnished 
illustrations of invincible attack; as when 
Homer, in the Iliad, speaking of the valour 
of the Greeks, causes one of the enemy 
to exclaim amazed, — 


‘1 did not look to see the men of Greece 

Stand thus before our might and our strong arms ; 
Yet they, like pliant-bodied wasps or bees, 

That build their cells beside the rocky way, 

And quit not their abode, but, waiting there 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


The hunter, combat for their young — so these, 
Although but two, withdraw not from the gates, 
Nor will, till they be slain or seized alive.” 

Virgil speaks of the “fierce hornet” as 
destroying bees, and Ovid tells how bald 
Silenus undertook to rob a nest of hornets, 
supposing they were bees. Out flew the 
furious insects and sat them down upon 
his bald pate and stung until he fell down 
screaming for help. Bacchus appeared 
upon the scene and mercifully plastered 
mud upon the wounds,—the remedy still 
in vogue, and probably the only one worth 
trying. 

It is well to remember that wasps are 
always more active and eager to sting in 
hot weather and when the sun shines. He 
who wishes to take a wasp’s-nest, will fare 
better to wait for a cold, damp day when 
the insects are too chilly to be properly 
resentful. 

In the Bible the Lord uses the hornets 
to help clear a way for the chosen people. 


ree 
ee 


~VESPA’S STING 


“ Moreover, the Lord thy God will send the 
hornet among them, until they that are left, and 
hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.’’ 


Again it is written, — 


“And | will send hornets before thee, which shall 
drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite 
from before thee.” 


And in a brief history of God’s benefits 
to the children of Israel it is narrated, — 


“And I sent the hornet before you, which drave 
them out from before you, even the two kings of 
the Amorites.” 


’ 


In “Cruden’s Concordance,” in the in- 
troduction to the subject of hornets, we 
read that “A Christian city, being besieged 
by Sapores, king of Persia, was delivered 
by hornets; for the elephants and beasts, 
being stung by them, waxed unruly, and 
so the whole army fled.” 

Not only have armies been dispersed, but 
cities have been abandoned because of the 


fierce onset of the hornets. Moffett says, — 
6 


82 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


“Tf we will credit /Elianus, the Phasilites, 
in times past, were constrained to forsake 
their City, for all their defence, munition, 
and Armour, all through the multitude and 
cruel fierceness of the Wasps, wherewith 
they were annoyed.” 

So far from blaming them for thus tor- 
menting the Phaselites, Moffett magnani- 
mously and humorously adds, — 

“ Again, this manifestly proveth that they 
want not a hearty and fatherly affection, 
because with more than heroicall cour- 
age and invincible fury they set upon all 
persons, of what degree or quality soever, 
that dare attempt to lye in wait to hurt or 
destroy their young breed, no whit at all 
dreading Neoptolemus, Pyrrhus, Hector, 
Achilles, or Agamemnon himself, the Cap- 
tain General of all the whole Grecians, if 
he were present.” 

The following story corroborates Mof- 
fet’s estimate of the valour of the 
wasps. 


VESPA’S STING 


“Fight miles from Grandie the mule- 
teers suddenly called out ‘Marambundas! 
Marambundas!’ which indicated the ap- 
proach of wasps. In a moment all the 
animals, whether loaded or otherwise, lay 
down on their backs kicking violently; 
while the blacks and all persons not already 
attacked, ran away in different directions, 
all being careful, by a wide sweep, to 
avoid the swarms of tormentors that 
came forward like a cloud. I never wit- 
nessed a panic so sudden and complete, 
and really believe that the bursting of 
a water-spout could hardly have produced 
more commotion. However, it must be 
confessed that the alarm was not without 
good reason, for so severe is the torture 
inflicted by these pigmy assailants that 
the bravest travellers are not ashamed to 
fly the instant they perceive the host 
approaching, which is of common occur- 
rence in the campos.” 

Aristophanes’ well-known comedy “ The 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Wasps,” bears testimony to the popular 
reputation of Vespa. 

The comedy is a satire upon the ten- 
dency of the time to inordinate lawsuits, 
and upon the character of the dicasts or 
jurymen of the period. A dog is tried for 
stealing a piece of cheese, and the dicasts 
are habited as wasps. © 

“Have a care what you do; they’re a 
sharp, angry crew, quick as wasp’s-nest, 
when urchins molest it,” is the significant 
warning against the horde of dicasts in the 
second act. 

And the chorus informs us at the 
end, — 

And still, they say ,in foreign lands, do men this 
language hold, 

There ’s nothing like your Attic wasp, so testy and 
so bold.” 


In modern times there is no lack of 
stories of outrages committed by hornets 
upon inoffensive humankind, though from 
the hornet’s point of view there no doubt 


VESPA’S STING 


was sufficient provocation for every attack, 
notwithstanding /Elianus’ assertion about 
the wasps that “by nature they are great 
fighters, eager, boysterous, and vehemently 
tempestuous.” 

Our hornets are pleasant enough when 
let alone, but they will not bear an injury 
with patience, and Moffett is quite right 
when he says, — 

“Whosoever dare be so knack-hardy as 
to come near their houses or dwelling 
places, and to offer any violence or hurt to 
the same, at the noyse of some one of 
them all the whole swarm rusheth out, 
being put into an amazed fear, to help 
their fellow-citizens and do so busily be- 
Stir themselves about the ears of their 
molesters, as that they send them away 
packing with more than ordinary pace.” 

The hornets of Eastern countries are 
larger than those of our own part of the 
world, and seem to have a hotter temper, so 
that travellers in the East have often been 


85 


WASPS AND THEIR “Wats 


driven from their positions by this small 
but valiant foe. 

Although it may not be true, as was 
believed in Pliny’s time, that three times 
nine stings will kill a man, yet there is no 
doubt that a sufficient number of infuri- 
ated wasps, attaching themselves to one 
person, can deprive him of life. In India, 
where the wasps are very abundant and 
very fierce, a party of engineers, while 
surveying a railroad on the banks of the 
Jumna, was once attacked by a colony of 
hornets, when two of the surveyors were 
stung to death and several others were 
severely injured. 

The hornets of Shahjehanpoor, how- 
ever, take the prize as conquerors, for they 
defied the British army, and for one season 
held possession of government store-houses 
where sugar was kept. 

During their time of occupation no one 
dared enter the buildings, and when late 
in the season the hornets yielded, not to 


VESPA’S: STING 


man, but to the hand of death that slays 
all wasps in the fall of the year, it was 
found they had consumed nearly three 
thousand pounds of Her Majesty’s sugar, 
leaving piles of cotton bags chewed full 
of holes and stuffed with the bodies of 
defunct hornets. 

But the hornets of Shahjehanpoor do a 
service to the British Government which 
no doubt more than compensates it for 
the raid they made on those sugar stores, 
for they act the part of scavengers and 
keep the vicinity of the butchers’ booths 
clean. 

One has to admit that oriental hornets 
do seem a trifle precipitate, and perhaps 
even a little ugly in the use of their stings. 
Dr. King, of Penang, reports of one: “‘ He 
is very vicious, and we are all in great fear 
of him. No later than last Sunday one 
flew into the Scotch kirk, where one of 
the merchants was reading the service, 
plumped down and stung him instantly 


88 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


on the head, and was off again in a 
moment. The sting drew blood, besides 
being excessively painful. I was once 
stung by two of them while riding at a 
foot’s pace by their nest, on the back of 
the head. The pain was most severe. 
Tenderness down the neck and in the 
part remained for more than two weeks 
afterwards.” 

That was too bad, and seems quite inex- 
cusable ; still, the hornets doubtless would 
argue that Dr. King had no business to be 
riding so close to their nest; and as for 
the one that behaved so shamefully in the 
kirk, what proof have we that bad little 
boys, who had not gone to church, had 
not been stirring up the hornets, and en- 
raged them to the point of being glad to 
sting any human head they could reach? 

At least the hornets that drove Lord 
Clyde’s army into the river were excus- 
able, as they were first attacked by the 
soldiers. 


VESPA’S (STING 89 


It seems that—‘‘A picket of Lord 
Clyde’s army were amusing themselves 
throwing stones at an odd-looking mass 
of mud and straw hanging on a tree. 
One marksman, more successful than his 
comrades, sent a stone with great effect 
into the centre of the mysterious object, 
when out flew a cloud of hornets and 
drove Lord Clyde’s invincibles into the 
river.” 

The sting of the wasp is like 
that of the bee in structure 
and action. 

It is composed of a sharp- 
pointed sheath with a length- | 
wise groove on one side, into 

y 
y 


which are fitted two barbed 
lances that play up and down 
in the groove. 

The lances are moved by a system of 
levers composed of flat horny plates con- 
nected to the upper end of the sheath and 
lances and controlled by muscles. 


90 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


The sheath is also barbed at the end so 
as to hold the sting in place while the 
lances are being thrust deeper and deeper 
into the skin. 

A poison-sac communicates with the 
upper end of the sting, and from the sac 
the poison is pumped into the wound by 
the motion of the lances. 

The sting of the wasp is very sharp and 
very small, and it is the poison pumped 
into the wound rather than the wound 
itself that causes the unpleasant conse- 
quences of a wasp sting. The sting, if 
unpoisoned, would cause no more pain 
than the prick of a fine needle. 

Usually the wasp, like the bee, loses its 
sting when it plunges that weapon into 
an enemy. The barbs that point back- 
wards hold the sting fast, and the effort 
to pull it out often results in tearing the 
sting from the wasp’s body, and as a con- 
sequence of the mutilation, the insect soon 
dies. The larger hornets are often strong 


VESPA’S STING 


enough to withdraw the sting uninjured, 
and where this is the case they do not 
hesitate to use it‘again and yet again. 

Where the sting is left in the wound it 
should be removed at once, as the muscles 
that are torn away with it continue to 
contract and to pump the poison into the 
wound. 

The wasp, like the bee, has two little 
feelers attached to its sting, and these it 
first protrudes as though to examine the 
object before inserting the sting. 

Probably these feelers are useful in find- 
ing the exact spot in the cell where the 
egg is to be laid. 

Claudius /Elianus, a Greek writer of 
the second century, tells us that the people 
of his time believed wasps found a dead 
serpent and with its venom poisoned their 
stings, just as human barbarians poison 
their darts by dipping them into some 
venomous substance. 

He also informs us that the wasps 


92 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


sharpen their stings by friction, as we 
sharpen a knife by rubbing the edge 
against an oil-stone. 

According ‘to AElianus too, the wasp did 
not always find its sting capable of pre- 
serving it from harm, for the wily fox 
out-witted the angry Vespa and ate up 
its nest. Moffett has thus translated the 
story in his own picturesque style: 

“Reynard the Fox, likewise, who Is so 
full of his wiles and crafty shifting, is re- 
ported to be in wait to betray Wasps after 
this sort. The wily thief thrusteth his 
bushy tail into the Wasp’s nest, there 
holding it so long until he perceives it 


to be full of them, then drawing it. slily 


forth, he beateth and smiteth his tail full 
of wasps against the next stone or tree, 
never resting so long as he seeth any of 
them alive; and thus playing his Fox like 
parts many times together, at last he 
setteth upon their combs, devouring all 
that he can finde.” 


STARTING THE NEST 


HE well-known grey 

structures wasps build in trees, under 
the eaves or in the ground, are generally 
seen in the fall of the year. Then the 
leaves have left the tree branches bare dis- 
closing the nests so carefully hidden under 
the foliage in the summer time. 

Moreover, in the fall of the year, boys 
fearlessly take down these nests and hang 
them up as ornaments in the house. 

Boys do not take them down in the 
summer —for a very good reason; but 
they know that after the first frost the 
nest has no fiery occupants to defend 
it; it is an abandoned domicile — safe 
booty for whoever finds it. 

Sometimes a hornet’s nest is nearly as 
large as a bushel basket, but that is at the 
end of the season. The beginning of every 

93 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


nest is simple enough, and consists of but 
a cluster of three small cells. 

Early in the summer the females of the 
social wasp may be seen flying about, - 
searching everywhere for a good building- 
site. 

One is suspicious that Madam Vespa 
uses this nest-hunting as excuse for a 
prolonged lark, seizing the opportunity to 
investigate her little universe, and find out 
a great many things besides the best loca- 
tion fora home. The large yellow queens 
of the yellow-jackets, may be seen flying 
about in the spring, peering into every 
cranny in the woods, investigating every 
fallen log and heap of rubbish, poising on 
vibrating wings under the eaves of build- 
ings, examining every growing tree, bush, » 
or herb, and what is more noticeable, ex- 
amining with equal minuteness any human 
brother who happens to be abroad. Cer- 
tainly they do not intend to suspend a 
nest from any part of your person, yet 


STARTING - THE REST 


they favor you with as prolonged and 
careful an examination as they give to 
any tree, or rock, or roof. 

If the windows are open they are sure 
to come into the house; then they are in 
a state of consuming curiosity. What 
does everything mean? They examine 
each article of furniture in a comically 
thorough manner, flying around and be- 
hind it, and hanging buzzing so close to 
it that they seem to be testing its quality 
with their antenne. Sometimes it is but 
one or two objects that thus occupy them, 
sometimes one of them will remain an 
hour in a room satisfying herself con- 
cerning every object in it, not slighting 
any quiet and inoffensive occupant that 
may be there. Indeed the human owner 
of this strange nest seems oftentimes to 
puzzle her more than all else, and if one 
but keeps still she proceeds upon a very 
flattering inspection, — very likely poising 
directly in front of one’s eyes, so close that 


95 


96 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


the breeze made by her little wings can be 
distinctly felt. Her small face is close to 
yours, her large eyes gazing intently into 
your own; and there she hangs while you, 
flattered by her close attention, sit and look 
calmly back at her or close your eyes until 
the close buzzing of her ladyship ceases to 
roar in your ears. One living in a region 
of wasps becomes quite familiar with these 
spring visits, and at least one person feels 
slighted if Queen Vespa enters the room 
and goes out without noticing its human 
occupant. It is unnecessary to say that 
wasps under such circumstances never 
sting. They are simply about their busi- 
ness, trying to get an education out of 
the only book at their command. Ina few 
weeks these large yellow queens disappear. 
Other, smaller, less prodigally yellow creat- 
ures roam the fields, but the large queens 
are absorbed in domestic duties that keep 
them within their doors. 

The queen-hornets also intrude their 


STARTING THE NEST 


black-and-white presence in people’s houses 
in the spring, but they do not seem so 
curious nor so friendly. Their investiga- 
tions seem rather aimless, in comparison 
with those of their yellow relative, and 
their manner is much more suspicious and, 
if one may say so, tempestuous. 

Only the perfect females or “queens” 
of the Vespe survive the winter, and 
when they are wakened to life by the 
warm sun of early summer, each little 
queen wasp has upon her shoulders the 
responsibility of the whole family, — she 
must build her own house as well as take 
care of her own offspring. She does not 
start in life, like the queen bee, with thou- 
sands of helpers ready to do all the work 
and even to feed her royal highness. 

She must do everything for herself, at 
_ least at first. 

When she has found a place to her 
mind, perhaps in the branches of a tree, 
or under the projecting eaves of a build- 

7 


98 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ing, or ina hole in the ground, Vespa 
betakes herself to a grey and weather- 
worn rail, or to an old stump, and there 
she sits and gnaws length- 


aA wise of the grain until she 
2X£OF-—~ | *- has a little bundle of wood- 
ert fibre in her jaws. 


This she takes to her chosen site and 
chews into pulp, mixing it with saliva 
from her mouth. 

Now behold the first paper-maker of 
the world at work! 

For the social wasps were making a 
serviceable paper ages and ages before 
man dreamed of such a thing. 

When the Egyptians were laboriously 
cutting their records in stone, or draw- 
ing them up on the pressed pith of the 
papyrus, and the Europeans theirs on the 
inner bark of trees, and the North Amer- 
ican Indians were tanning the hides of 
animals and painting their messages upon 
them, the wasp folk were busy making a 


SI AkRT ING <THE NEST 


true paper, a paper that man finally learned 
to make, in essentially the same way that 
the wasp makes it. 

For paper is only vegetable fibre reduced 
to pulp and pressed into sheets. 

Having gathered her little ball of wood- 
fibre, and reduced it to a pulp of proper 
consistency by chewing and moistening 
with sticky saliva, Vespa first builds a 
slender stem or support for her future 
home. 

To the end of this she hangs a little 
cluster of three or more hexagonal cells, 
also of paper. 


She begins at the roof and builds down, =~ 


suspending her habitation from above, 


ee 


instead of building it on foundations CAN 


that rest on the earth. 

She begins her first cell, but does not 
finish it before she starts another, and 
when she has a cluster of three half- 
finished cells she lays an egg in the first 
one, and goes on building. As fast as the 


100 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


cells are large enough she deposits an 
oblong white egg in each, placing it in 
an angle of the cell and about one half or 
two thirds down, or what will be one half 
or two thirds down when the cell is 
finished. 

Her cells are six-sided, and are like 
honey-comb cells, excepting that they are 
made of paper instead of wax, and are 
suspended mouth down instead of lying 
on one side. 

Since the cells hang mouth down, one 
naturally wonders why the eggs do not 
fall out as soon as put in. 

The reason is that each is covered with 
a sticky substance, so that it is glued 
firmly to the cell wall. 

The ancients had as little idea of the 
origin of wasps as they had of the origin 
of bees, and while they believed the bees 
were bred from the decaying carcass of a 
bull, the wasps, they tell us, came from the 
dead body of an ass or a horse, the fierce 


i’, fie 
ld y 


SPrARTING THE NEST 


swift hornets owing their origin to the 
body of a war-horse. 

There was also a superstition among the 
Egyptians that wasps were generated from 
the decaying carcass of a crocodile. 

However, a later generation discovered 
that wasps proceed from eggs laid in the 
cells of the nest by the queen wasp. 

The egg is generally placed in an inner 
angle of the cell, and is attached by one 
end. 

Her first three cells completed, Vespa 
starts another row of cells around them, 
depositing an egg in each as soon as it is 
ready. 

She evidently does not consider these 
exposed cells a safe resting-place 
for her progeny, for no sooner has 
she formed a little group of nine 
or a dozen cells than she proceeds 
to make a paper wall about them. 

The result of her labours is a 


pretty little grey ball, with a hole <] 


102 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


in the bottom, enclosing the 

« group of cells, but not attached 

to them. The first wall made 

ee i ee consists of but one layer of grey 

Ne paper, and at that stage the nest 
looks its prettiest. 

Vespa finally devotes all her time to 
caring for her progeny, for ina few days 
the first eggs laid have hatched into tiny 
white maggot-like larve, and every day 
more eggs hatch out. Queen Vespa is 
obliged to go hunting food for these 
ravenous infants. They are still attached 

to the side of the cell by the tail end, 
but their mouths are free, and are al- 
ways ready to open for something to 
be put in. 
They have little round white heads, with 
little pin points of eyes and a pair of tiny, 
brown, horny jaws. The eyes of the 
larva are simple, the compound eyes 
not appearing until the adult form. 
When the comb is jarred, out are 


=—— 
= 
= 
— 
= 


SLARTING ‘THE NEST 


thrust all these little heads, and the mouths 
are opened wide, for they suppose that 
Mother Vespa is coming to feed them. 

When a number of the eggs have 
hatched, Vespa devotes most of her time 
to catching flies and other insects, chew- 
ing them up and feeding the hungry 
youngsters in the cells with them. 

One is reminded of a mother bird feed- 
ing her nestlings, when watching the 
mother wasp going from cell to cell, and 
putting food into each little open mouth. 

The larve are always ready to open their 
mouths, and it is no wonder they are for- 
ever asking for more, as they grow at a 
marvellous rate, in the course of a few 
days filling their cradle cells with their 
plump, white bodies. 

One trying ordeal every young Vespa 
has to pass through, and that is the change 
of position in its downward-opening cell. 
Since the egg is glued to an angle of the 
cell part way down, when it hatches, the 


103 


104 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


larva grasps the cell with two little feet at 
the end of its tail, at the same spot where 
it was hatched. As it grows larger, how- 
ever, it must manage somehow to reach 
the bottom of the cell, so that it may have 
room to continue its growth. 

This migration to the bottom of the 
cell necessitates turning around twice, let- 
ting go its hold on the side of the cell, 
and yet keeping its position in the down- 
ward-pointing cell so as not to fall out. 

If the difficult feat of letting go, turning 
around, and moving to the bottom of the 
cell is accomplished, all is well. 

But sometimes it is not accomplished. 
Poor baby Vespa, using her still useful 
tail-feet and her jaws to hang on by, slips 
or makes a miscalculation, and out it 
tumbles head over heels. 

It is said the mother wasp sometimes 
puts it back after such an accident, but 
generally it lies and wriggles in the cold 
outer world until death claims it. 


SrARTING THE NEST 105 


Or if it falls out later in the season the 
worker wasps carry it out of the nest and 
leave it to perish. 

But if it once gets fixed in the bottom 
of the cell, with its head hanging down, és STN 
all it has to do is to stay there. 

This may look difficult, but it is ie 
easy, for young Vespa is now a fat, white 
grub, or larva, with a brown head, footless, 
it is true, but with a way of ruffling up 
the sides of its body that enables it to fit 
tightly in the cell and there remain. 

When the larva has reached the limit of 
its growth it finds its mouth full of silk. 

This comes out through a hole in its lip, 
and whenever it touches anything with its 
mouth little viscid threads like saliva are 
drawn out, and these harden into a fine, 
glistening silk. 

Now young Vespa ceases to crave food. 
She touches the side of her cell with her 
‘mouth, draws back her head, touches 
another part of her cell, draws back 


106 


| 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


her head, —each time pulling out sticky 
threads that harden into silk. 
Thus moving her head about, she 


cane (™ lines all but the bottom of her cell 


with soft, tough, white silk; then 
she reaches out her head and weaves 
back and forth, back and forth, over 
the opening to her cell, until she 
has formed a strong cap or roof over her 
head. From the very beginning she has 
more responsibility than the young bee; 
no fond nurse seals the opening to her 
cell, she is obliged to do that wholly for 
herself. The cap made, the infant is now 
lying in a silken bag of her own manufac- 
ture, open at one end and closed at the 
other with a cap of silk that is heavier 
than the silk used in making the rest af 
the bag. 

Her cocoon, if such it can be called, is 
much heavier and stronger than the simi- 


lar covering the young bee makes for . 


itself, 


oN 


mr ARTING THE NEST 


107 


She is now safely wrapped up, her silk 
covering preventing the too rapid evapo- 
ration of the juices of her body. 

Lying there motionless, a marvellous 
change comes over her. She loses her 
fat larval form, a waist line appears, below 
it is a ringed abdomen, above it Is a 
thorax with incipient legs and wings, and 
a waspish-looking head. 

She is now a “ pupa,” and at one stage of 
her transformation is a very charming little 
creature, as she is as white as snow, and 
has the daintiest legs and antenne 


grows darker-coloured until finally a 
perfect wasp lies in the silk-lined cell. 

During her larval life Vespa sheds her 
skin as she increases in size, and finally, 
throwing off the last delicate covering 
from her pupal body, she is ready to step 
forth into the world and see what is going 
on there. 


lying close to her body. ‘ 
As time goes on, however, she | ae 


108 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


She reaches out her jaws, which are 
much larger and stronger than the brown 
dots of jaws she possessed as a larva, and 
with them cuts a hole in the cap she spun 
over her head a few days ago. As she 
works she moistens the spot with saliva. 

Snip, snip, snip, go the jaws in the dark 
cell. 

One can easily hear them at work. Then 
a little opening appears. Snip, snip, snip, 
go the jaws until the hole is large enough 
to let out one of the antenne. 

This organ, newly freed from confine- 
ment, waves about as though examining 
the world into which its little owner is 
about to enter. 

But the jaws are still snipping, and 
finally the cap is so nearly cut away that 
Vespa’s face can be seen filling the open- 
ing of the cell. 

Then a foot appears, a fore-leg is 
stretched out, and very likely the first 
thing it does is to clean the antenna. 


STARTING THE NEST 109 


It is very amusing to watcha young --¢ 
Vespa coming out of its cell, tucked % 
away, all but the head and fore-legs, 
and industriously cleaning its face and 
hands and polishing up its antenne. 

It takes its time, and when it has rested 
from the effort of uncapping its cell, and 
has thoroughly made the toilet of its head 
_and hands, it begins to pull itself out. 

It grasps the surrounding comb with its 
fore-feet, and struggles until it has pulled 
out its second pair of legs. 

The remainder is easy, and in a moment 
more a shining young wasp stands on the 
comb and surveys its surroundings. 


Wo 


2) FINISHING THE NEST 


HE first wasp that emerges from a nest - 


is not a queen. 

It is smaller than the queen-mother, is 
not so brightly coloured, and is called a 
“worker.” It is an imperfect female, un- 
able, as a rule, to lay eggs. The first thing 
it wants is something to eat, and this the 
queen-mother gives it. 

It very often hides away in an empty 
cell for a while, as though to rest, or 
“think it over.’ When it goes into a cell 
it now does so head first, with only its tail 
protruding. 

The time for development from egg to 
imago, or perfect insect, seems to vary, 
perhaps according to the species, perhaps 
according to the temperature. One ob- 
server reports his wasps as five days in the 
egg, nine in the larval state, and thirteen 


in the pupal state, — twenty-seven days in 
110 


FINISHING THE NEST 


all. Another, his as eight days in the egg, 
twelve or fourteen in the larval state, ten in 
the pupal, — thirty-one or thirty-two days 
in all. Asa rule, it probably takes about 
a month to complete the development. 

All of the wasps hatched early in the 
season are workers, and as soon as they 
come out of their cells they prove their 
right to the name, for they take upon 
themselves the whole work of the nest. 

The queen can now devote her time to 
egg-laying, for the young workers clean 
out the cells and make them ready to 
receive another set of eggs. They also 
enlarge the comb by building more cells. 

They fly to a weather-beaten rail-fence 
or to an old stump, and there they stand 
and gnaw lengthwise of the grain until 
they have a little ball of wood-fibre, with 
which they fly home. They chew it 
thoroughly, wetting it with their sticky 
saliva, and then proceed to shape it into 
more cells. 


241 


112 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Nobody tells them how to do all this, 
but they remember, somehow, that their 
mother did it this way before they were 
born. 

Young Vespa lays down pulp for a roof, 
then builds the cell walls by adding strips 
of pulp at the edges and biting them into 
shape. 

As she stands on the rim of an un- 
finished cell, adding pulp, the walls rise 
slowly, and soon a little six-sided cell testi- 
fies to her skill as a comb builder. 

One sometimes has a chance to see the 
yellow-jackets at work on a nest that has 
been destroyed — or where an attempt has 
been made to destroy it. If any of the 
little occupants escape destruction they 
will return to the old place and start the 
nest again, building it up, or rather down, 
from the foundation if necessary. 

One should be on hand as soon as the 
agitation following the removal of the nest 
subsides enough to make a near approach 


a a SSE AE SEARS A CSS EMSRS CU EE RE 


FINISHING THE NEST 113 


safe, or else the first cells will have been 
built, and the whole enclosed in an envel- 
ope that completely conceals what is going 
on inside. 
As soon as the workers of an undis- 
turbed nest begin to come out, they go to 
work upon the walls of the nest, adding 
layer after layer, until sometimes there are 
a dozen or more. PAP YENI DE ENG ONG. 


Quickly the little nest made oF 
by the mother wasp increases Gouee 
in size, when all is well with = 


the swarm. ae zs 


But there seem to be a great aed 
many vicissitudes in the lives of the hornets 
and yellow-jackets, and one may often find 
in an out-building a dozen of their little 
round nests, begun but never finished. 

Doubtless something happened to the 
queen before her first brood was hatched. 
A greedy bird may have swallowed her, a 
boy may have killed her, she may have 


fallen into the water and been drowned, or 
8 


114 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


there may have come a cold, rainy spell to 
which she succumbed, for wasps are deli- 
cate creatures and perish in large numbers 
during a bad season. Indeed, they are 
more dependent upon fair weather for 
their success in life than are many less 
hardy-looking animals. 

Even where the brood has begun to 
hatch, if the queen is lost the workers 
soon abandon the nest. 

Wasps can often be watched at work 
on the outer covering of the nest. 

To pursue this particular line of obser- 
vation, it 1s well to select a cold and cloudy 
day, as the wasps are then not so easily 
excited. 

Dr. Ormerod, who spent a great deal of 
time studying wasps, has well described 
the method of nest-building as follows: 

‘“When a wasp came home laden with 
building materials, she did not tmmedi- 
ately apply these, but flew into the nest 
for about half a minute, for what purpose 


FINISHING THE NEST 


I could not ascertain. Then emerging she 
promptly set to work. Mounting astride 
on the edge of one of the covering sheets, 
she pressed her pellet firmly down with 
her fore-legs till it adhered to the edge, 
and walking backwards, continued this 


same process of pressing and kneading till 


_the pellet was used up, and her track was 
marked by a short dark cord lying along 
the thin edge to which she fastened it. 
Then she ran forwards, and, as she re- 
turned ‘again backwards, over the same 
ground, she drew the cord through her 
mandibles, repeating this process two or 
three times till it was flattened out into a 
little strip or ribbon of paper, which only 
needed drying to be indistinguishable from 
the rest of the sheet to which it had been 
attached.” 

Dr. Ormerod also discovered that each 
wasp has not a place of her own at which 
to work, but that all work anywhere and 

anyhow, as bees build their combs. They 


115 


116 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


know what the final result is to be, and all 
work towards that without finishing indi- 
vidual parts as they go along. 

The variegated appearance of many nests 
is doubtless due to the fact that differ- 
ent wasps bring in materials of different 
colours and apply them indiscriminately. 

Dr. Ormerod is of the opinion that only 
young wasps build, and this seems prob- 
able, as the secretion necessary to form the 
paper would be most abundant in young 
insects, just as with bees the younger ones 
perform the office of nurses, and supply 
the food partly digested by themselves to 
the larve. 

Young wasps are larger than old ones, 
and their wings are not tattered, and it 
was such only that Dr. Ormerod saw at 
work on the nest. 

The old wasps find work enough in pro- 
viding insects for the many hungry larve. 

A flourishing wasp’s-nest is a scene of 
constant building up and tearing down. 


PrNntoHINnNG THE NEST 


No sooner is the outer covering completed 
than the combs have to be enlarged and 
new tiers of them added. 

This enlarging is done by gnawing away 
the walls from the inside, and adding layers 
on the outside. Thus the space within is 
increased without exposing the combs. 

There is never any connection between 
the walls of the cells and the combs. 

The combs are suspended from supports 
above, and hang free in the space formed 
by the enclosing walls. 

When a comb has reached a certain size 
the wasps do not continue to enlarge it, 
but suspend another comb below it, fasten- 
ing the new structure to the old bya stout 
paper-pillar support in the centre, and this 
is often reinforced by a number of side 
supports. 

The wasps use the roof of the new 
comb as a floor to the space above, and 
indeed a wasp’s-nest is but a series of 
floors, or stages, suspended one below an- 


ti7 


118 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


other, each floor having attached to its 
under side a large number of cells opening 
mouth down. 

The same cells are generally used two or 
three times, for as soon as one brood is 
hatched the cells are cleaned and put in 
repair by the workers and more eggs are 
laid in them by the queen. 

The first cells built are smaller than 
those in the later combs. As the colony 
prospers, it becomes generous in its treat- 
ment of the new members. The cells 
built by the many industrious workers are 
larger, and their well-fed occupants are 
also larger; indeed towards the end of the 
season there sometimes come forth large 
and portly workers that approximate the 
queen in size. 


\) 
ay 
Ee 


\ — 
 \\\\ 
v 
' f 
f 
Da H 
i 
4 


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| ae Ser a 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES 


HE interior of a wasp’s-nest is a very 
marvel for neatness and order. It ts 
kept perfectly clean, and probably the 
wasps ventilate it through the hole. in 
the bottom which in some nests forms 
the only entrance, as bees ventilate the 
hive by fanning with their wings near 
the opening. 

- Certainly, captive wasps fan, just as 
captive bees do, and it is reasonable to 
suppose that this action is applied as a 
remedy for bad air. | 

The wasps, like the bees, have sentinels 
to watch at the entrance, and when a nest 
is disturbed these are the first to fly 
out and investigate the cause of the dis- 
turbance. 

At their alarm the inmates of the nest 
rush forth, an angry swarm, ready to sting 
anything or anybody within reach. 

119 


420 


WASPS AND’ THEIR WATS 


Hornets have been known to work by 
moonlight, and captive wasps are unable 
to compose themselves to sleep if there is 
a light near them. 

The workers do all the work of the hive, 
and live on friendly terms with one an- 
other and with the world in general, unless 
some one from the outside world alarms 
them and causes them to fear harm to 
their nest. 

Wasps do not steal from one another as 
bees so often do, and different swarms do 
not fight, though once in a while there 
will arise bad blood between two members 
of a nest; then there will be a fierce com- 
bat very likely resulting in the death of 
one. 

Generally, however, the wasps are 
friendly with one another, and when a 
worker flies home with her stomach full 
of honey she is willing to regurgitate the 
delicacy for the benefit of her relatives. 
She stands and puts forth a glistening 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES 


drop from her mouth while two or three 
hungry sisters eagerly lap it up. 

Although the wasp’s-nest has such a 
modest beginning it often attains quite 
lordly dimensions toward the end of the 
season, and contains many thousands of 
inhabitants. 

For several weeks only workers are 
developed. Then into some of the larger 
cells, which, we have seen, are built later, 
unfertilised eggs are laid, the queen hay- 
ing the power to fertilise the eggs or not, 
as she pleases. From these unfertilised 
eggs drones are developed. Sometimes 
the drone combs are quite distinct from 
the worker combs, the cells in those being 
larger than the worker cells; and again, 
drone eggs are laid in the larger cells of 
the worker combs. 

The drone is the male wasp. He is 
usually larger than a worker, is more 
brightly coloured, has long, drooping an- 
tenne, and he has no sting. 


121 


122 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


He is rather sluggish as compared with 
the workers, and likes to put his head 
down into an empty cell and stay 
there with only his tail visible — 
) probably taking a nap. 

i Sometimes, however, he bestirs 

himself and helps to feed the 
larve, going from cell to cell and popping 
food into each wide-open mouth. 

At least, yellow-jacket drones have 
been seen to do this in captivity. 

It is said the drone also keeps the vespi- 
ary clean, clearing away all rubbish ane 
carrying out dead bodies. 

The workers are undeveloped sernales 
that hatch from fertilised eggs. Usually 
they have not the power to lay eggs, 
though if the queen disappears some of 
the better developed of the workers some- 
times lay eggs. These are never fertilised, 
and consequently produce nothing but 
drones. 

Soon after the drone eggs are laid, the 


/ 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES = 123 


workers build yet larger cells than any yet 
constructed, and in each of these a fertil- 
ised eggis put. When it hatches, the care- 
ful nurses supply it with abundant food, 

In its larger cell, with room to develop 
and plenty of nutriment, the insect be- 
comes a perfect female, or queen. 

The queen cells are not only larger than 
the others, but are also taller, the cap 
being built down farther below the edge 
of the cell. 

The queen combs are very pretty with 
their snowy, rounded domes. 

Often they are the last made, and there- 
fore are the lowest combs in the nest. 

Frequently the lowest comb will be 
wholly devoted to queen cells, though 
sometimes they are found encircling other 
combs. 

In time the queens emerge large and 
handsome. 

They are bright in colour, and are marked 
differently from the other members of the 


124 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


nest. They are considerably larger than 
the drones, and can be recognised at a 
glance. 

On sunny days they fly abroad, 
where they mate with the drone. 
@\\ Each queen at that time receives 
a quantity of fertilising material, 
which she stores in a receptacle 
that exists for that purpose, and _ this 
material she uses at will to fertilise her 
egos. The queens mate but once, the 
supply they receive lasting as long as 
they live. Queens and drones spin their 
own cocoons just as the workers do. 
Indeed, the development of the queens 
and drones from egg to pupa, and from 
pupa to perfect insect or imago, 1s essen- 
tially the same as the development of the 
workers. 

Several sizes of wasps may always be 
found in the same nest. Not only are the 
queens larger than the drones, and the 
drones larger than the workers, but queens, 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES 


drones, and workers differ in size among 
themselves. 

Some queens will be very large and 
beautiful, others will be much smaller. 

Drones differ in size even more than 
queens, some being large and well-devel- 
oped, others being scarcely larger than 
workers. 

Sometimes tiny little workers are seen 
in'a nest, not more than half as large as 
the largest of their kind. 

Very likely the food given causes this 
difference in size. Some larve occupy 
larger cells and better positions in the 
combs than others, and probably receive 
more attention from the nurses. 

The larve that get the most food de- 
velop into the largest and finest wasps. 

Although the wasps’ nests are so won- 
derfully constructed, they are not fitted to 
serve as winter habitations. 

It is not necessary that they should be 
so used, for the history of a wasp colony 


125 


126 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


is very different from that of a swarm of 
bees. 

The worker bees remain alive through 
the winter, and the same hive is densely 
populated year after year. 

Not so with the wasps. At the approach 
of cold weather they desert their nests. 

No more combs are built, and even the 
eggs and larve already in the cells are 
abandoned. 

Winter is coming, and with the first 
severe cold all drones and workers must 
perish. 

Meantime, all thought of work and of 
home forgotten, the wasps fly about, often 
in large numbers, visiting the fall flowers, 
eating the ripe fruit, getting into houses, 
making nuisances of themselves, and hay- 
ing a good time generally. 

The French naturalist Réaumur says that 
the wasps not only abandon their larve at 
approach of cold weather, but that they 
drag them out and ruthlessly kill them. 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES 


This does not seem to be true of Ameri- 
can wasps. They are content to leave 
their helpless young to the mercy of the 
frost, which is perhaps less merciful than 
the apparently cruel massacre of Réaumur’s 
wasps. 

The young queens having power to 
resist the cold, crawl into some cranny, 
where they lie apparently lifeless, with their 
legs and wings folded about them, and 
await the coming of spring. Even in this 
state they can sting, as more than one 
luckless experimenter has learned to his 
cost. 

Some people are afraid to take a wasp’s 
nest into the house in the fall of the year, 
believing it to be full of dormant wasps 
that only need the genial warmth of the 
house to come to life and rush forth intent 
on making it lively for their entertainers. 
But this is not the case. The fall nest can 
be safely handled, as it is empty of living 
wasps. 


127 


128 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Very soon the interior of a nest aban- 
doned by the great mass of inhabitants 
becomes unfit for the habitation of the 
hibernating queens. 

It becomes damp and mouldy inside, 
and is taken possession of by all sorts of 
vermin. Moreover, the fierce winter blasts 
blow these delicate fabrics to pieces, so 
that it is usually impossible to find a last 
year’s wasp-nest, no matter how plentiful 
the nests may have been. 

On rare occasions a nest in a very shel- 
tered dry spot may escape destruction, and 
it is possible that queens may occasionally 
winter in these nests, though such an occur- 
rence 1S a rare exception, if it ever happens. 

Although it is within comparatively 
recent times that the habits of the social 
wasps have been scientifically studied, yet 
the ancients were not unobservyant of these 
interesting insects. 

Indeed, Aristotle, in his “ History of Ani- 
mals,” has given a very admirable account 


WORKERS, QUEENS, AND DRONES 


of the nests and the habits of the wasps. 
He describes their hexagonal cells, which 
he compared to those of bees, adding that 
they are not formed of wax, but of a 
web-like membrane, made of the bark of 
trees. He also describes the young in the 
cells, and tells us that in his time the 
wasps were so harmful to the bees that 
_ the bee fanciers caught them in pans in 
which they had placed pieces of meat. 
When many had collected in the pan it 
was covered and set on the fire. - 

Wasps are still fond of bees and when 
able will catch them and carry them as 
food to their nests. They are very fond 
of honey, so no wonder the honey-laden 
bee should be a tempting morsel, combin- 
ing as it does both honey and juicy insect 
food. 

Aristotle accurately describes the queen 
wasps and the workers. He also gives a 
clear and accurate account of nest-making, 


the rearing of workers first, and later of 
9 


129 


£30 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


the mother wasps, and he describes the 
abandonment of the nest at the approach 
of winter, telling us that only the mothers 
survive to start the nest anew next year. 

Indeed, he gives so good and so accurate 
an account of the whole history of the 
wasps, that modern writers have added but 
little new information. 


WASP ARCHITECTURE 


ASPS cling to the traditions of their 
ancestors in nest-building. Each 
species has its own inherited ideas on the 
subject, and invariably builds in accord- 
ance with those ideas. But while the 
nests differ in certain fixed details, in a 
broad general way they are all alike. All 
are made of paper. All contain combs 
enclosed by separate outer walls. 
The hornets build smooth and 
handsome structures of paper that ¢ 
can be peeled off in large sheets 
and they generally have but one 
entrance hole near the bottom. 
Some of the yellow-jackets make 
nests of coarse, friable materials, that break 
at the slightest touch. Sometimes sand 
is found in the paper of which wasps’ 
nests are built, and some yellow-jackets 


lay on their walls, not in large separate 
131 


132 


WASPS AND THEIR WATs 


sheets, but in the form of shell-work, or 
overlapping scales. Such nests generally 
have several entrance holes and are often 
very handsome structures. 

As a rule the nests built by yellow-jack- 
ets in the ground have coverings of coarser 
material and less elegant architecture than 
nests built in trees or under roofs. But 
even where the nest is in the ground, it 
has its covering of paper walls. Certain 
species of yellow-jackets, or ground-wasps, 
as they are often called, take possession of 
a hole they find, and this they enlarge to 
suit their needs by biting off and carrying 
out, bit by bit, the earth. They are cave- 
dwellers, but their caves are made warm 
and comfortable by the paper lining they 
always give them. It is quite a surprise to 
dig out one of these nests for the first 
time and find the snug and complete habit- 
ation, often of quite large size, and fitted 
up with its tiers of combs and all the 
essential parts of an out-door nest. 


WASP ARCHITECTURE 


133 


All wasps’ nests are able to resist mots- 
ture to quite an astonishing degree, be- 
cause of the glue-like saliva with which 
the building materials are welded together 
and with which the nest is sometimes 
varnished over. 

The strength of paper depends largely 
upon the length of the fibres of which it 
is made, and Vespa, using very friable 
materials, makes them as serviceable as 
possible by gnawing the wood lengthwise 
of the grain, instead of cutting it up into 
sawdust. Thus she is able to convert 
wood into a paper that holds together as 
long as she needs it. 

In late years the wasp’s secret of making 
paper from wood-pulp has been discovered 
by man, and truth to tell, the product he 
Supplies is sometimes little better than wasp 


paper in strength or appearance. Some ~ 


consider the wasp paper far the prettier. 
Since Vespa builds her habitation of 
paper which she herself manufactures, and 


134 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


since she is a creature of resources, she is 
willing to use any good paper-making 
material that comes her way. 

She, no doubt, prefers the wood fibre 
or the fibre obtained from leaves or roots 
used by her ancestors for countless gen- 
erations, yet if that is not convenient she 
does not hesitate to take any reasonable 
substitute. She has been known to make 
a gay abode of bright colours from un- 
known materials. The author of “‘ Homes 
without Hands,” says, — 

“I have seen a nest which was made 
almost entirely of the blue and white 
paper used for cartridges, the wasps hay- 
ing taken advantage of the expended 
papers, and used them instead of taking 
the trouble to gnaw hard wood.” 

Vespa does not use ready-made paper, 
but chews it up and re-spreads it, so to 
speak, into wasp paper. 

The present writer once took a yellow- 
jacket’s nest in which the predominating 


WASP ARCHITECTURE 


colours were dull red and yellow, and the 
outer wall was laid on in a fine and very 
elegant shell pattern. The paper of this 
nest was so very brittle that it fell to pieces 
at the slightest touch, and the nest itself 
was built to fit in an irregular space in a 
cornice at the corner of a piazza. There 
were half a dozen or more entrance 
holes scattered over the walls of the 
nest, a common thing in this form of 
architecture. 

Generally wasp paper is grey in colour, 
for generally it is made of weather-worn 
wood. Usually the grey is in bands of 
alternating light and dark, and often these 
bands are in waving lines, which gives a 
pretty effect to the whole. 

Favourite building-sites for hornets and 
the tree-dwelling yellow-jackets, are wood- 
ed mountain sides. The wasps enjoy the 
seclusion of the woods, and are apt to bea 
little inhospitable— some might go so far 
as to say resentful — when the children of 


135 


136 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


men wish also to enjoy the mountain 
slopes, as most climbers have had reason 
to know. The hornets, no doubt, cannot 
comprehend a mental condition which 
sends creatures wandering about strange 
forests for the mere pleasure of wandering, 
and when they see the terrifying biped 
approach and intrude upon what they con- 
sider their territory, wild with fear and rage 
they sally forth, and without word of warn- 
ing smite the happy and unsuspecting pil- 
grim into a temporary indifference to the 
beauties of nature. 

They like also to build in swampy places, 
but they are not very conservative on the 
subject of building-sites, and often choose 
to hang their nests in a snug corner under 
the rafters of a barn or the eaves of a 
building. 

In hot countries the social wasps are 
more abundant than in temperate climates, 
and all sorts of queer-looking nests may be 
met with in the forests and jungles of the 


WASP ARCHITECTURE 


137 


tropics. There are a good many species 
scattered over the world that are not repre- 
sented in North America at all. Some 
build enormous nests with a hard, crust- 
like covering ornamented with many pro- 
jections which cause them to look like 
monstrous fruits with rough rinds. But 
woe to the ignorant traveller who seeks to 
possess himself of this strange tropical 
fruit ! 

A South American species builds a 
bag-like nest several feet long and 
crowded with tens of thousands of cells, 
the whole encased in a hard rind-like 
covering. 

Wasps seem to make their nests accord- 
ing to the circumstances of their lives. In 
India, where the dry season lasts the life- 
time of the wasps, one large species of 
Vespa builds its nest of mud. When the 
rains come the queens hide away, ready to 
start a new nest at the beginning of the 
next dry season. 


138 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


In Demerara, where the storms are vio- 
lent, the nests are often covered with a 
hard case, one species making a beautiful 
white, polished cardboard-nest, so strong 
and compact that it can withstand the 

<=— hardest rainstorm. This nest is 
usually broadest at the top, and 
4, 1S entered by a hole in the 
IwGi4\ bottom. — 
4)\ The combs are very regular in 
“<) form, and very prettily placed 
“within their protecting walls. 


It is said the mocking-birds build their 


nests above those of the card-board wasps 
to secure their young from the attacks of 
monkeys. ) 

Monkeys are fond of young birds, but 
seldom Would one be hardy enough to 
try for a meal by climbing over a wasp’s 
nest |! 

The mocking birds are not the only ones 
wise enough to make the wasps their gar- 
rison of defence, for there is a little fly- 


WASP ARCHITECTURE 


catcher in South America that makes its 
home close to the nest of one of the social 
wasps. 

There is a South American wasp that 
builds its combs in concentric spheres, 
instead of in horizontal layers, and this 
thickly packed interior is surrounded and 
protected by a very thin wall. 

Another social wasp builds its comb 
along the trunk of a tree, covering it over 
with an outer shell. 

A pretty little nest is found in South 
America attached to the under side of a 
large, strong leaf. It consists of one flat 
comb of tiny cells covered over by a hard 
shell or wall. ) 

Indeed there seems to be no end to the 
variety in form, size and material of the 
nests of the social wasps 
in different parts of the 
world, and the traveller 
in tropical countries 
will do well to remem- 


139 


naman emammamas 


140 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ber never to interfere with a queer-looking 
object hanging on a tree—or anywhere 
else for that matter. 

It is wiser to let it alone and find out 
what it is by asking. 


TAKING NESTS 


HOEVER aspires to owning a family 
of tame hornets should begin 
operations early in the season, 
when the little ball-like nest Ae 
can be easily and safely taken @SS= 
after nightfall, with the queen 
at home. The wasps will 
not desert the nest so long 
as the queen is not lost. If not frightened 
or hurt they soon make friends with their 
captor. 

As few people, however, will have the 
opportunity, or inclination, to capture a 
nest of live wasps and manipulate it so as 
to see what is going on inside, a better 
way to satisfy one’s craving for a knowl- 
edge of wasps, is to wait until about the 
middle of September, then, having found 
a yellow-jacket’s nest in a convenient 


location (on the eaves of a building is 
141 


142 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


good), wait until some cool evening when 
the wasps are sluggish. 

~~ With a long-handled hoe or other 
> implement suddenly pull the nest down 
— and run! 

Get around a corner of the building 
out of sight and wait a few minutes. 

The wasps will at once cluster on the 
old site of the nest, not following it to the 
ground. | 

When the excitement is over, in five 
minutes or so, go quietly back, moving 
slowly and gently, pick up the combs that 
are scattered on the ground, taking as 
many wasps as possible on them. Lay 
the combs in a cardboard box over which. 
place a cover of wire-netting. 

Combs can thus be taken without cover- 
ing the face and hands and without get- 
ing stung, though a few stings rightly 
regarded only add to the zest of the adven- 
ture, as a yellow jacket’s sting is not a very 
serious matter, anyway. 


TAKING NESTS 


Through the netting all the operations 
of the workers can be watched. 

The combs should be laid in upside 
down, which may be a little disconcert- 
ing to the occupants but which keeps 
the mouths of the cells from resting on 
the floor of the box and also enables the 
observer to watch the process of feeding 
the larve. 

A little hanging door should have been 
cut in one end of the box so that food 
can be put in. 

By the middle of September the combs 
will contain capped cells of workers, drones, 
and queens, as well as open cells that con- 
tain larve in all stages, and unhatched 
eggs. 

There should be at least a few workers 
in with the combs to care for the larve 
until more workers hatch out. 

Soon there will be a large and ever- 
increasing family. Workers will uncap 
their cells and come out, then drones will 


143 


144 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


begin to appear, and finally the large and 
handsome queens will come forth, and all 
will industriously feed the remaining larve. 

Honey or syrup should be supplied as 
food to the adult wasps, and flies or raw 
meat should be given them to feed the 
larve. 

They feed the larve some syrup or 
honey, but like to add animal food to the 
diet. 

A wasp will bite out a bit of raw meat 
and put it into the mouth of a larva, 
leaving the infant to chew it up as well as 
it can. 

It is an amusing spectacle to see a comb- 
ful of larve each with a bit of red meat in 
its mouth, upon which it is industriously 
feeding. 

The combs can be successfully watched 
for several days, the length of time de- 
pending upon the environment, for the 
young brood exposed to changes of tem- 
perature eventually perish before all have 


TAKING NESTS 


145 


completed their transformations. The box 
should be covered at night and at all times 
_ kept away from cold draughts. 

A large number of queens, drones, and 
workers under ordinary circumstances will 
hatch out under the eye of the observer, 
and some of the larve will be sure to spin 
their cocoons. 

When one understands wasps and their 
habits, the common fear of these creatures 
very largely departs. 

It is not difficult to get possession of 
the combs in a yellow-jacket’s nest, and 
even the stings of these creatures are not 
so fearful as fancy paints them. 

With care one need not get stung. It is 
astonishing how many liberties one can 
take with yellow-jackets, if one has knowl- 
edge of their ways and exercises self con- 
trol and intelligence when dealing with 
them. 

Not long since a yellow-jacket’s nest was 


raked down from the eaves of a house, and 
10 


146 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


the operator succeeded in getting several 
of the combs, with a number of wasps on 
them. 

The combs with pieces of the paper - 
walls were put in a cardboard box and 
covered with mosquito netting, but this 
had to be replaced at once by wire netting, 
as the little captives gnawed their way out 
the second day of their captivity. Fortu- 
nately they were discovered just in time, 
the box was covered with wire gauze, and 
the refugees were caught and returned 
to it. 

There were three sizes of cells taken. 
One comb was composed entirely of small 
worker-cells, one of drone-cells and one of 
queen-cells. Several broken combs con- 
tained worker-cells only, and in this par- 
ticular nest each comb contained but one 
kind of cell. The queen-cells were all 
capped, and so were most of the drone- 
cells, but in the worker-comb were larve 
of all ages, as well as newly laid eggs. 


TAKING NESTS 


The workers put in the box with the 
combs took care of the larve, and as the 
combs lay with the mouths of the cells up, 
the little creatures must have been greatly 
puzzled by this upside down state of 
affairs. 

The larve were no longer hanging head 
down but their mouths were still open 
begging for food, and a lively time the few 
workers captured with the combs had, 
caring for this numerous and 
ravenous family. Soon, how- 
ever, strong little jaws began 


to gnaw the caps from the cells, then little 


heads began to appear and new wasps 
came forth. These new wasps washed 
their hands and cleaned their antenne, and 
at once began to feed the still uncapped 
- larve, that is, after they had satisfied their 
own hunger. 

The wasps did not try to build up the 
nest again, but devoted themselves to the 
larve and to efforts to escape. It was very 


147 


148 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


interesting to watch them feed the infants, 
and feed the drones when those large and 
lazy fellows began to come out of their 
cells. 

One morning a-hole was noticed. in a 
queen cell, and a pair of jaws were at 
work inside enlarging it. The observer 
was too impatient to await the slow 
process of my lady’s natural emergence, 
and with a long hat-pin gently assisted 
her in tearing off the cap. Then forth 
stepped the handsome young queen, the 
first of the season. 

The workers near her cell greeted Hee 
appearance with some show of interest, 
running to her, caressing her with their 
antenne, and feeding her from their 
mouths, though they had paid no atten- 
tion to the coming forth of drones or 
workers. 

The queen differs from the workers in 
her fuller development. She doubtless 
is the product of abundant nutriment. 


TAKING NESTS 


We know the queen bee is produced by 
special feeding and no doubt it is the 
same with the wasps. The queen wasps 
differ in size, though not as much as the 
drones. 7 

After the first queen had come forth 
others followed in quick succession and 
the box was soon buzzing with a large 
number of queens, drones, and workers. 

Taking a wasp’s nest in the fall of the 
year is not as unkind as it may appear, 
since the workers and drones must soon 
perish anyway, and even the last of the 
eggs and larve in the course of nature fail 
to mature, and perish from cold in their 
cells. When the wasps have been watched 
for a few days and one’s curiosity is satis- 
fied, the kindly naturalist will allow the 
captives their freedom, thus preserving the 
queens to start new nests the next year. 
The queens cannot mate in captivity, this 
function being performed on the wing, and 
they will not live the natural span of their 


149 


150 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


lives unless freed soon after coming from 
their cradle cells. 

Under ordinary circumstances wasps 
should not be destroyed, as they are our 
good friends, keeping down the hordes of 
insects injurious to vegetation. 


ENEMIES 
ASPS, like other folk, have their 
enemies. 
Certain birds catch and eat them, and 


‘certain badgers, it is said, feed upon their 


nests. 

One would not expect them to fall vic- 
tims to such a foe as the ant, yet such is 
the case in tropical countries. 

Mr. Belt, in his “Naturalist in Nica- 
ragua,” tells this remarkable story, — 

“The ants send off exploring parties up 
the trees, which hunt for nests of wasps, 
bees, and probably birds. If they find any 
they soon communicate the intelligence 
to the army below, and a column is sent 
up immediately to take possession of the 
prize. I have seen them pulling out the 
larve and pupe from the cells of a large 


wasp’s nest, whilst the wasps hovered 
151 


152 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


about, powerless, before the multitude of 
invaders, to render any protection to their 
young.” | 

The worst enemies of the wasps are to 
be found within their own nests, from 
parasites of their own Order. 

Certain little chrysis flies are bred in the 
nests at the expense of the wasps. 

The bold mother chrysis enters the nest, 
deposits her own egg in the cell with a 
wasp larva, and when the chrysis hatches 
it proceeds to suck the juices of its host. 
As the chrysis lives and commits its dep- 
redations at the bottom of the cell, below 
the wasp larva, it is not discovered. 

Perhaps the nurse wasps wonder why 
some of their little charges are so sickly, 
but there is reason enough, for their life 


juices are being drained, and when they 


have finally spun their cocoons they are 
wholly at the mercy of the enemy and 
dwindle to a small shrunken mass, while 
the young chrysis, fat and hearty, finally 


ENEMIES 


makes its own cocoon beneath the de- 
frauded wasp larva, first forming a sort of 
roof over its end of the cell. This roof is 
light brown in colour and looks not unlike 
the scale of a pine-cone seed. 

If the roof is carefully broken away, the 
young usurper will be discovered wrapped 
in a glistening silvery blanket, a royal 
covering compared to the simple silken 
covering of the young Vespa. 

There is nothing in its line, prettier than 
the little tinsel cocoon one can pull out of 
the raided cell, and within which lies the 
infant chrysis. It is alittle savage wrapped 
in robes of savage splendour. 

Its transformations completed, young 
chrysis finds its way out through its own 
roof and through the tough cocoon built 
by the despoiled larva, a small impertinent- 
looking black fly with long sensitive 
antenne. 

There are several other parasites, vege- 
table as well as animal, that infest the 


153 


154 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Vespe; so, in spite of her formidable 
weapon, Madam the Wasp cannot free 
herself from all enemies. The toad is 
said to find the wasp an agreeable article 
of diet, and to swallow the piquant 
delicacy with relish. This finished gour- 
met has been seen sitting close to a 
wasp’s nest and snapping up the delicious 
morsels as they drew near, winking his 
eyes in evident enjoyment of the fiery 
repast. 

Boys are the natural foes of the wasps, 
destroying their nests for the mere fun of 
it, but the Creoles of Mauritius take the 
nest for the sake of the larve, which they 
roast in the combs and eat. 

The nests are taken by burning out the 
wasps, and the combs are sold at the 
bazaar of Port Louis. 

Destroying wasps’ nests by burning is 
a common practice to-day, as it was at the 
time of Euripides, who thus refers to it in 
his drama “ The Cyclops” : — 


ENEMIES 


Chorus of Satyrs (to Ulysses, who tells them they 
must help him to put out the Cyclop’s eye with an 
enormous burning-brand). ‘‘ How lightly would | 
lift the load of e’en a hundred wains, if that will 
help us grub out the eye of the doomed Cyclops, 
like a wasp’s nest.’ 


£55 


INTELLIGENCE OF WASPS 


ASPS. possess an intellect that is 

an honour to them, in-so-much- 

as it is doubtless a development resulting 

from their own efforts to accomplish re- 

sults they were capable of conceiving and 
of desiring to accomplish. 

They know a great deal as a result of 
what might be called ancestral memory, a 
memory of deeds their ancestors performed 
so often that in time such deeds became 
perfect and automatic; and this memory 
we are accustomed to entitle instinct. 

The mind of the wasp still remains 
active, the insect not wholly relying upon 
its ancestral memory for present emergen- 
cies. It can still observe, remember, and 
reason. 

Wasps reason well, but they do not 
argue at all, though where humankind 1s 

156 


Pele lrGENCE: OF WASPS 


concerned, they have remarkably effective 
powers of persuasion. They say to a man, 
“Go,” and he goeth forthwith. 

They are very quick and alert in their 
movements and have a pretty way of turn- 
ing their heads to look at one who has 
made friends with them, so that they are 
not frightened at his approach. | 
~ Wasps, like bees, learn to know individ- 
uals, and they have their likes and dislikes, 
allowing some persons to approach their 
nest unmolested, and stinging others. 

There was once a nest of little yellow- 
jackets in a wood-shed, where whoever 
entered was obliged to pass within a few 
inches of it. This most people could do 
with impunity. But there was a coloured 
boy whom the black-and-yellow tenants of 
the nest could not endure. They would 


not allow him to enter the shed, or even | 


to come within several yards of the door. 
“They bite me whenever I go that way,” 
he complained, and he had not molested 


157 


158 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


them in any way. Perhaps he smelled of 
deceit, and they were afraid to trust him 
near their precious paper fabric. Romanes 
tells of a man who used the wasps to 
police his premises. This clever person 
allowed a species of wasp native to Natal 
to build in the door-posts of his house, 
and although he often interfered with 
their nests, he was stung but once, and 
then by a young wasp. The value of 
this arrangement is better appreciated 
when one learns that the wasps allowed 
no Caffre to approach the door, much 
less to pass through. 

It is generally easy to make friends with 
the wasps if the nest is near at hand, and 
if they are never frightened or tormented. 
They do not sting for the sake of sting- 
ing, but only in self-defence. There are a 
number of cases on record of people hav- 
ing allowed the hornets to build in their 
houses, and suffering no inconvenience in 
consequence. 


PN TAL UIGENCE QF: WASPS 


- That wasps have a good memory was 
shown by those that learned to go to their 
nests through a paper opening of various 
colours. They not only observed the 
colours but remembered them. 

Once a wasp’s nest was built in an attic, 
and the wasps were in the habit of ap- 
proaching it through an open window. 
One day this window was closed, and 
after bumping against the glass a few 
times, the wasps found another entrance, 
and did not again attempt to pass through 
the window. 

Wasps show a good deal of ingenuity in 
accomplishing their ends. A wasp, having 
caught a large fly, whose wings, being 
blown by the wind, impeded its progress, 
was seen to stop and cut off the useless 
and troublesome members. It is quite 
common to see wasps cut an insect in two 
when it is too large to be carried whole. 

More remarkable than this, however, 1s 
the device sometimes used by hornets that 


159 


160 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


have caught too heavy a prize. Instead of 
cutting up the insect, the hornet drags it 
to the foot of a tree, drags it up the trunk 
to a branch, from which vantage point it is 
able to fly with its burden. 

Although wasps are very fond of flies, 
they catch many kinds of insects, and, it 
would seem, even larger game. There are 
on record two hunts that outdo all other 
feats in wasp annals. 

Edward Topsell, who wrote the quaint 
“History of Four-footed Beasts and Ser- 
pents,’ says, — 

“Whilst Pennius was at Peterborough 
in England, he saw in the wide and open 
street a Hornet pursuing a Sparrow, whom 
when he wounded with his sting, he fell 
down dead to the ground, and with the 
admiration of all that beheld them, he 
suck’t out and filled himself with the blood 
of the slain prey.” 

Again Topsell claims to have seen the 
same thing. 


PA TELLIGENCE OF WASPS 


“| myself, being at Duckworth in Hun- 
tingtonshire, my native soyl, I saw on a 
time, a great Wasp or Hornet making after, 


and fiercely pursuing a Sparrow in the » 


open street of the town.’— The end was 
tragic, as before, the wasp conquering, 
and sucking the blood of the luckless bird. 

Mr. Belt tells a very interesting story of 
the ingenuity of some social wasps he saw 
trying to keep the ants away from honey 
they themselves wanted. 

These ants were attending clusters of 
frog-hoppers, little insects that exuded a 
sweet liquid much relished by both ants 
and wasps, and for the possession of which 
a constant skirmishing was going on. 

“The wasps stroked the young hoppers, 
and sipped up the honey when it was 
exuded, just like the ants. When an ant 
came up to a cluster of leaf-hoppers at- 
tended by a wasp, the latter would not 
attempt to grapple with its rival on the 


leaf, but would fly off and hover over the 
44 


161 


aE Ee 


162 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ant; then when the little foe was well 
exposed, it would dart at it and strike it 
to the ground. 

“The action was so quick that I could 
not determine whether it struck with its 
fore-feet or its Jaws, but I think it was 
with the feet. I often saw a wasp trying to 
clear a leaf from ants that were already in 
full possession of a cluster of leaf-hoppers. 
It would sometimes have to strike three or 
four times at an ant before it made it quit 
its hold and fall. At other times one ant 
after another would be struck off with great 
celerity and ease, and | fancied that some 
wasps were much cleverer than others. 

“In those cases where it succeeded in 
clearing a leaf, it was never left long in 
peace. 

“Fresh relays of ants were continually 
arriving, and generally tired the wasp out. 
It would never wait for an ant to get 
near it, doubtless knowing well that if its 
little rival once fastened on its leg, it 


FNEELLIGENCE OF WASPS 


would be a difficult matter to get rid of 
it again. 

“If a wasp first obtained possession it 
was able to keep it, for the first ants that 
came up were only pioneers, and by 
knocking these off it prevented them from 
returning and scenting thé trail to com- 
municate the intelligence to others.” 

Wasps, as we already know, form their 
habits according to their environment. 
Those living near human habitations are 
more friendly than those living in the wil- 
derness, and they learn to eat the food of 
man. 

It seems the wasps even learn to sting 
according to circumstances. Our wasps 
fly directly at the bare face or hands if they 
have any pointed remarks to make. 

Mr. Belt says of the wasps of Nicara- 
gua, — | 

“TI got severely stung by a number of 
small wasps, whose nest I had disturbed 
in passing under some bushes. About 


163 


164 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


thirty were upon me, but I got off with 
about half a dozen stings, as | managed to 
kill the rest as they made their way through 
the hair of my head and beard; for these 
wasps, having generally to do with animals 
covered with hair, do not fly at the open 
face, but at the hair of the head, and push 
down through it to the skin before they 
sting. On this and on another occasion 
on which | was attacked by them, I had 
not a single sting on the exposed portion 
of my face, although my hands were stung 
in killing them in my hair. It is curious 
to note that the large black wasp that 
makes its nest under the verandas of 
houses and eaves of huts, and has had to 
deal with man as his principal foe, flies 
directly at the face when molested.” 


USES OF WASPS AND NESTS 


i most people the wasp, like the fly 

and the grasshopper, is a nuisance, 
a mere pest that the world would well be 
rid of. Yet the world could not afford to 
lose its wasps. 

They have their place to fill in the 
scheme of nature; and how do we know 
but that the sudden extermination of the 
wasp kind might unbalance the ae 
whole solar system and disor- ES 


\ 
Lop ee 


ganise the universe generallye = * 

Certainly the wasp occupies its place in 
the world with a confidence that justifies 
the assumption that it has a right to exist, 
and is even necessary to the maintenance 
of terrestrial order. 

Nor has man disdained to use it and its 
nest, though, truth to tell, the principal 


use made of it in olden time was to cure 
165 


166 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


its own stings; and there may be those 
small-minded enough to argue that if there 
were no wasps, their stings would not 
need to be endured or cured. 

It was, and in some places ‘still is, a 
common belief that wasps can be made to 
cure their own stings by being bruised and 
applied to the wound. 

Another cure for stings consists of 
wasps’ combs made into a plaster with 
willow leaves and mallows. 

Also, the earth wherein wasps’ nests 
were built, if mixed with vinegar and 
applied, was once believed to effect a 
cure. 

Since wasps, if misunderstood, insist 
upon punctuating their position with more 
fervour than manners, it is but fair that they 
should be made to cure the wounds they 
inflict. However, there is reasonable 
cause to doubt the efficacy of wasps’ nests 
and vinegar, or of crushed wasps them- 
Selves. 


USES OF WASPS AND NESTS 


167 


But though modern scepticism may have 


overthrown the poetic justice done the 


-wasps by our predecessors, it is good 
to remember that once the oil of wasps 
was recommended by a surgical writer in 
the seventeenth century as being a cure 
for their stings; and that another recom- 
mended a poultice made of wasps. 

A cynical modern writer, who may have 
good cause to know, says he has “ heard 
of cures, but never experienced one.” 

That the sting of the wasp is effective 
internally as well as externally, is attested 
by the following sad statement, — 

“Allen’s wife drank a wasp and fell 
down and dyed.” 

The chronicle does not say whether the 
lamented Allen’s wife drank it on purpose 
or accidentally. 

The worst known case of a malady 
caused by wasps is that of the Emperor 
Vespasian, who had a wasp’s nest in his 
nose. 


168 


WASPS AND ‘THEIR, WAYS 


“Tt was an awful sight,” says the chron- 
icle, and one would think it might be! 

Saint Veronica, who had been healed by 
touching the hem of Christ’s garment, 


fortunately for the afflicted emperor, pos- 


sessed a miraculous cloth, on which was 
imprinted a perfect likeness of Christ’s 
face. This cloth she took to Rome and 
held up before the face of the unfortunate 
emperor, who believed, and was straight- 
way cured. | 

Wasps have been used for other pur- 
poses than to cure their own stings, and 
they have been known — or believed — to 
bestow good, instead of ill, upon mankind; 
for the ancients, we are told, attribute 
“oreat vertue to the distilled water, and 
likewise to the decoction of common 
wasps.” 

Also, the large sheets of paper that 
envelop hornets’ nests are used for polish- 
ing spectacles in some country places, and 
the nests themselves are burned and in- 


me 


mors OF WASPS AND’ NESTS 


haled as a cure for asthma or colds. They 
are also burned near horses that are 
troubled with colds or with distemper, and 
are given to them in their feed “to cure 
thick-windedness.”’ 

Moffett, moreover, has a friendly word 
for the wasps, and informs us that “ their 
use is great and singular, for besides that 
they serve for food to those kind of Hawks 
which are called Kaistrels or Fleingals, 
Martinets, Swallows, Owls, to Brocks or 
Badgers and to the Cameleon: they also 
do great pleasure and service to men sun- 
dry ways, for they kill the Phalangium, 
which is a kind of venomous spider, that 
hath in all his legs three knots or Joynts, 
whose poyson is perilous and deadly, and 
yet Wasps do cure their wounds.” 

A pair of Carolina wrens in the Blue 
Ridge mountains once selected a large 
wasp’s nest hanging in the entry of a 
house in which to take up their winter 
quarters. 


169 


170 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


They slept in it every night for several 
months. 

The wasps have ever been used to 

' “point a moral and adorn a tale,” and that 

5 they did not escape as illustrations of moral 

c lessons for man’s betterment, Mr. Moffett 
g thus assures us :— 

© ‘“‘Clemens Alexandrinus, when he would 

(4, express and declare the foulness and abom- 

% inable hurt of such sins that do lie in 

( wait, as it were, to deceive, and watch to 

s do displeasure to the life of man, hath 


these words, — 
ay ““That is, these fat, dull, grosse and 
Olympicall enemies of ours are worser than 
Wasps, more cruel and displeas- 
= ant, and especially sensuall and 
es ot worldly pleasure.’ ” 


SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT WASPS 


ASPS were augurs of evil in ancient 

days, and we are told that in the 

year 190 B.C., “an infinite number of 

wasps flew into the market at Capua, and 

sat in the temple of Mars. They were 

with great diligence taken and burnt 

solemnly. Yet they did foreshadow the 

coming of the enemy and the burning of 
the city.” 

Wasps were also looked upon as weather 
prophets, and probably are still as reliable 
as ever they were in that capacity. 

If hornets build high it is a sign the 
winter will be dry and mild; if low, the 
winter will be cold and stormy. Hence 

the following popular rhyme, — 
} “ If hornets build low, 
Winter storms and snow ; 
If hornets build high, 


Winter mild and dry.” 
171 


172 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


This old superstition was probably 
founded upon the belief that hornets re- 
main in their nests during the winter, in 
Bia which case they would be 

= safer to build low when a 
=== hard season was at hand. 
= Probably a truer prediction 

is that made by an observant 
“zs gamekeeper who said that the 
height at which wasps make their nests 
above the water is a rough index of the 
amount of rain expected during the sum- 
mer. Ina wet season they choose the top 
of the bank near a brook, in dry they may 
build almost at the water’s level. 

It was once believed that hornets flying 
late in autumn foretold storms at sea. 

This seems a less reasonable prediction 
than the one where it 1s said, if wasps are 
seen flying about in great numbers toward - 
evening, it is a sign that the next day will 
be fair and hot; but if they enter their 
nests often at twilight, as if to hide or 


pomeree alt 
= duh 


SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT WASPS 


shelter themselves, that is a sign of stormy 
weather. 

For wasps, hornets, and gnats to bite 
more eagerly than usual is a sign of rainy 
weather. 

There is a superstition in England, and 
also in some parts of America, that the 
first wasp seen in the season should be 
killed, thereby insuring good luck and free- 
dom from enemies throughout the year. 

Opposed to this is the belief that the 
first wasp seen should not be killed, and 
many people consider it bad luck ever to 
kill a wasp. 

If a wasp stings you, it is a sign your 
foes will get the best of you. 

If the first wasp of the season Is seen in 
your house, that is a sign you are to form 
an unpleasant acquaintance, while if the 
first bee is seen in your house, you are to 
form a pleasant acquaintance. 

If wasps build in a house, it is a sign the 
occupants of that house are coming to want. 


173 


POLISTES 


OLISTES is a charming little social 

wasp, with the paper-building in- 

stinct on one hand, and the general appear- 
ance of the solitary wasp on the other. 

Her pretty paper combs are hidden away 
in bushes, or hung up in out-buildings, 
and they are never covered with a protect- 
ing outer wall. She has no fear of fresh 
air, and her offspring grow up blown about. 
i“ every breeze that passes their dainty 

cradle cells. Her nest is small 
compared with that of Vespa, 
and her family are few in num- 
bers. 

In form she is long and slender, and in — 
colour she is brown with reddish spots on 
the big end of her abdomen, and some- 
times with one or more yellow rings about 
her body. 


174 


POLKS BES 


175 


She has a little flat tongue, like Vespa, 
and seeks nectar upon the flowers that 
Vespa visits. Only the females live through 
the winter, each one starting her own 
nest in the spring. She begins with a 
little group of three cells, like Vespa, 
and her comb grows in diameter until it 
may become as large as the palm of 
one’s hand. Sometimes when a particu- 
larly fine place is discovered, a number 
of wasps occupy it, building their combs 
so close together that they look like one 
broad sheet. 

Once these wasps completely lined with 
their combs the shelter that covered the 
skylight window of an artist’s studio. 

If they had done it with the deliberate 
intention of displaying themselves, they 
could not have chosen a better position. 

One standing below could look up 
through the window-glass directly into 
the open mouths of the cells, as the nests 
hung suspended from the shutter, and 


176 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


thus all that was going on could be safely 
observed. 

Polistes is very careful about strength- 
ening the little stalk that supports her nest. 
Vespa usually attaches her structure by the 
broad roof of the outer covering, or if it 
hangs in a tree, builds it about one or 
more branches so that itis very firmly 
fastened, but Polistes has only the slender 

=sr support, or pedicel, in the centre or at 
£, one end of hers, to hold it in place, and 
ed this little paper stalk she licks again and 
again, laying on thick layers of sticky, 
glue-like saliva until it shines as though it 

had been varnished. 

It is easy to take the nest of Polistes, as 
she makes very little resistance. 

Indeed, one can cut the nest down and 
carry it off, wasps and all, with very little 
danger of getting stung. 

Once a nest about two inches in diame- 
ter, was taken with half a dozen wasps on 
it. Some of the cells were occupied by 


PeLISTES 


larve in different stages, while others were 
capped over, and still others contained eggs. 

It was necessary to keep the nest shut 
up Ina box for several days, and in that 
time the confined wasps, perhaps becom- 
ing crazed by adversity, so far forgot 
themselves as to pull the larve out of the 
cells and suck their juices. 

Wishing to save some, if possible, the 
captor removed the unnatural nurses, and 
undertook the delicate task of feeding the 
larval infants herself. 

Holding up the little nest by its stem to 
investigate the state of affairs, she discov- 
ered four full-grown, but still hungry larve, 
with protruding heads and wide-open 
mouths. 

Their foster-nurse offered one a drop of 
maple syrup on the end of a wooden 
toothpick, and to her delight the larval 
infant greedily sucked it up. 

One by one the appetites of the four 


were finally satisfied— though it seemed 
g 


177 


178 


WASP S* AND TH ETRY Aas 


for a time as though their guardian’s whole 
life must needs be devoted to these raven- 
ous foundlings. 

For three weeks they were fed several 
times a day alternately on maple syrup and 
raw egg, and it began to seem as though 
they had given up all intention of proceed- 
ing with their natural lives, and had 
resigned themselves to an indefinite orgy 
of maple syrup and egg. Did ever wasp 
larve remain larve so long? They must 
have gone at least two weeks over their 
time before they began to show signs of 
spinning. 

Then, one day, when their rations were 
proffered them, fine, sticky threads adhered 
to the toothpick, and their weary but 
patient nurse joyfully realised that at last 
they were going to “ take a rest,” and give 
her one too. 

Nor were her hopes vain. One spun a 
thin, delicate, almost transparent cocoon, 
and unkindly did it in the night, when 


POE Patras 


it could not be observed. By morning 
the ungrateful larva had retired from 
view. 

The next, however, rewarded its nurse’s 
patient care by beginning operations in the 
middle of the afternoon under her very 
eyes, and as she watched the dainty weaver 
she felt fully repaid for three weeks’ unre- 
mitting administration of syrup and egg in 
toothpick portions. 

First the larva lined its cell, turning its 
head down under its body, and also turn- 
ing around and around in the cell. 

Then it began to build the cell walls 
higher, for the wasps, in anger or despair or 
for some other reason, had chewed down 
the edges of its cell before they were re- 
moved, so that it was not long enough to 
contain a full-grown wasp. 

The hand fed larva knew this, and so it 
laboriously spun a top story to its room, 
and then built over its head the prettiest 
rounded dome of snow-white silk. 


179 


180 


WASPS AND fT REIKR WAS 


Its silken covering was not so thick as 
that of the wasps reared on the natural 
food of wasps, but it was very perfect as 
far as it went, and so thin that the larva 
could easily be seen through it. 

The larva remained its own white, grub- 
like self for several days, and then— one 
day the nest was examined, and there 
shone through the thin cocoon the face of 
a wasp! 

The hand-fed larva had actually trans- 
formed. Weeks passed and it did not 
come forth. Finally the cell was opened, 
and it was found — dead, with its wings 
not formed. It had done its best, but too 
much turning up the wrong way, — for 
the nest had to be inverted to feed the 
larve,— or more probably an innutritious 
diet, had defeated its efforts, so that it had 
not quite enough vitality to make a com- 
plete transformation. 

The third larva spun so delicate a cocoon 
that one day when the comb was suddenly 


POLISTES 


turned down, the silken cap could not hold 
the weight of the now motionless pupa, 
and it fell crashing through, —an accident 
which terminated fatally, as once exposed 
to the air it could not transform. 

The fourth larva gave up the unequal 
contest and died without attempting to 
spin, and the one that spun 
first also died in its cell with- 
out developing its wings. 

It is an easy matter to tame By 
Polistes, particularly if the nest ot 
is taken early in the season before many 
wasps have hatched out. 

Although the adult wasps were all re- 
moved from the nest described, others 
soon hatched out and they were so tame 
that the nest could be picked up while 
they were on it without exciting their 
displeasure. 

The drones that hatched from this nest 
all had white faces, although the faces of 
the other wasps were brown. 


181 


182 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


‘Like other drones these also had long 
antenne, by which, and their white faces, 
they could be recognised at a glance. 

Sir John Lubbock once took a specimen 
of Polistes with her nest, in the Pyrenees 
early in May. She became very tame, and 
lived till near the end of February. 

Sir John Lubbock’s account of her death 
is quite touching. 

“One day,” he says, “I observed she had 
nearly lost the use of her antenne, though 
the rest of the body was as usual. She 
would take no food. Next day I tried again 
to feed her; but the head seemed dead, 
though she could still move her legs, wings, 
and abdomen. The following day I offered 
her food for the last time ; for both head and 
thorax were dead or paralysed; she could 
but move her tail, a last token, as I could 
almost fancy, of gratitude and affection. 

“ As far as I could judge, her death was 
quite painless; and she now occupies a 
place in the British Museum.” 


POLTSTES 


Like Vespa, Polistes leaves the nest at 
the approach of cold weather; the queens, 
after mating, find a safe place in which to 
pass the winter, and the drones play about 
in the sun until they succumb to the 
inclemency of the season. 

A number of these homeless drones 
were once watched on a Massachusetts 
hillside. 

They had long, drooping antenne and 
white faces. 

Each had its favourite rock where it took 
its station on the sun-warmed south side, 
and none would allow another to come 
near its place. 

When one, perhaps tired of his own rock, 
tried to sun himself on his neighbour’s 
boulder, there was trouble. The invaded 
wasp flew at the intruder; they grappled 
and rolled head over heels among the 
leaves ; then the original cccupant returned 
in triumph to his rock, and the intruder 
flew away. 


183 


184 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


There was room enough on each boulder 
for any number of wasps, but only one 
might sit there at a time. 

The observer could not decide whether 
some favourite wasp game, like foot-ball or 
tennis, was being played, or whether these 
drones really hated the sight of each other. 

Polistes is a wise little creature in the 
things that pertain to wasps, and Mr. Belt 
has told an interesting story of the intelli- 
gence of one of the family in finding her 
way back to an object she had left. 

He says, — 

“A specimen of Polistes carnifex was 
hunting about for caterpillars in my garden. 
I found one about an inch long and held it 
out towards it on the point of a stick. It 
seized it immediately, and commenced bit- 
ing it from head to tail, soon reducing the 
soft body to a mass of pulp. It rolled up 
about half of it into a ball, and prepared to 
carry it off. Being at the time amidst a 
thick mass of a fine-leaved climbing plant, 


PULTSEIES 


it proceeded before flying away, to take 
note of the place where it was leaving the 
other half. To do this, it hovered in front 
of it for a few seconds, then took small 
circles in front of it, then larger ones 
round the whole plant. I thought it had 
gone, but it returned again, and had an- 
other look at the opening in the dense 
foliage down which the other half of the 
caterpillar lay. It then flew away, but 
must have left its burden for distribution 
with its comrades at the nest, for it re- 
turned in less than two minutes, and 
making one circle around the bush, de- 
scended to the opening, alighted on a leaf, 
and ran inside. The green remnant of the 
caterpillar was lying on another leaf inside, 
but not connected with the one on which 
the wasp alighted, so that in running in it 
missed it and soon got hopelessly entangled 
in the thick foliage. 

“Coming out again it took another 
circle, and pounced down in the same spot 


185 


186 


WASPS AND’ THEIR WAYS 


again, aS soon as it came opposite to it. 
Three small seed-pods which here grew 
close together formed the marks that I had 
myself taken to note the place, and these 
the wasp seemed also to have taken as its 
guide, for it flew directly down to them, 
and ran inside ; but the small leaf on which 
the fragments of caterpillar lay, not being 
directly connected with any on the out- 
Side, it again missed it, and again got far 
away from the object of its search. It 
then flew out again, and the same process 
was repeated again and again. 

‘Always when, in circling round, it came 
in sight of the seed-pods down it pounced, — 
alighted near thern, and recommenced its 
quest on foot. I was surprised at its per- 
severance, and thought it would have given 
up the search; but not so. It returned at 
least half a dozen times, and seemed to get 
angry, hurrying about with buzzing wings. 

“At last it stumbled across its prey, 
seized it eagerly, and as there was nothing 


POLIS TES 137 


more to come back for, flew straight off to 
its nest, without taking any further note 
of the locality. Such an action is not the 


result of blind instinct, but of a 
=e 


thinking mind, and it is wonder- 
ful to see an insect so differently 
constituted, using a mental pro- 
cess similar to that of man.” 

Although Polistes is the only 
paper-maker in this country, ex- 
cepting a species in California that 7f 
builds unprotected combs, in other 
parts of the world may be found 
a number of species. , 

In Java is a social wasp that constructs 
a nest of three stories, very much like the 
arrangement of combs in the nests of the 
Vespz ; only, this nest is not enclosed, and 
hangs suspended by a long, slender, cen- 
tral pedicel. 

In South America, too, is found a pretty 
little nest hanging like a bell from a long,’ 
slender handle. 


188 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Very likely these long, slender stems in 
hot countries are useful in protecting the 
wasps from the incursions of ants that 
yee Swarm everywhere in tropical places. 
The wasps could strike off the ants as 
they travelled down the slender support. 

There are about half a dozen species 
of Polistes in the United States, and 


Rt: but they all live essentially alike, build- 
> ing their paper nests in convenient 
= THACES. 

Some of the Polistes build circular combs, 
but other species have the curious habit of 
making oblique combs, with the pedicel 
attached at one end instead of in the 
middle. 


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PART II 


THE SOLITARY WASPS. 


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Part I1/—Tue Souttrary Wasps 


THE MASONS 


HE mason, or mud-building, wasps 
occupy themselves as their names 
imply. 

They are solitary in their habits, and 
since they do not dwell together in com- 
munities, there are no workers among 
them, only males and females. 

The female is unquestionably the head 
of the family; she does the whole work 
of nest-building and provisioning, gay 
and has everything her own § 
way. | 
The male seldom appears upon ’ 
the scene; he is necessary, but on 
the whole superfluous in the hard 
work of life, and he dies in the 
fall, leaving his partner in undisputed pos- 
session of the hereditary family estates, to 
locate her house as she pleases, and to 
furnish it as suits her. 

191 


192 


WASPS AND THETR WATS 


The ‘ mud-dauber” is the best known 
of the solitary wasps, as it makes itself at 
home in our attics and outbuildings, where 
it constructs the little mud nests so familiar 
to every one. 

It belongs to the division of digger 
wasps, and while in a general way these 
are constructed like the true wasps, they. 
differ in certain particulars. 

Unlike Vespa and Polistes, the eyes of 
the daubers are not cut across by a semi- 
lunar line, but are large and projecting; 
and unlike: the true wasps in general, 
the wings of the mud-dauber, as of all 
the diggers, are not folded fan-like down 
the middle. 

There are a number of minor character- 
istics distinguishing the digger from the 
true wasps, but the wings are the most 
readily observed, and are enough for ordi- 
nary purposes. 

The mud-dauber, or Pelopzus, is in 
appearance an elegant dame. 


THE MASONS 


She has a very long and very slender 
waist, —a ridiculous waist, that long ago 
caused Aristophanes to compare fashion- 
able women to wasps, calling them what 
has been translated as “ wasp-waisted 
wenches. ” 


Pelopeus’ legs are long and slender, and | 


ornamented with spines. 
As if conscious of the elegance of their 
personal appearance, the mud-daubers 


continually jerk their wings with 1 ee 


a self-satisfied little flirt that is as -< 
amusing as it is characteristic. *—~ - 

Why should not a wasp as well condi- 
tioned as amud-dauber flirt its wings at the 
rest of the world? It should, and it does. 

It flirts tts wings, but it does not use its 
sting unless forced to, and it soon becomes 
tame and friendly with the right kind of 
people. 

Pelopeus cementarius, very abundant 
in country places, is a pretty, brown crea- 
ture with yellow legs. 


193 


194 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


She may be seen in the summer gather- 
ing mud for her nest from the edges of 
mud-puddles or ponds with muddy banks, 
or even from the edges of drains; in fact, 
from almost any place where she can 
obtain it. She is not at all particular about 
the quality of her mud, all she asks is mud. 

The places she frequents betray her 
presence by the marks she leaves on the 
soft earth, for it is spotted all over, where 
she has chiselled out her little loads. 

She is a very eager worker when she 
does work, and when she has found a 
spot to her mind she falls upon it with 
vigour, and cuts out a little pellet about as 
large as a Sweet-pea seed with her jaws. 

In her earnest devotion to her work she 
rams her head down under the edge she 
has loosened, and literally stands on her 
head while she completes the separation of 
her pellet. 

It is a curious sight to come upon a 
mud-bank in the summer and find it lined 


THE MASONS 


with brown wasps standing on their heads 
and waving their tails in the air. 

The uninitiated observer might imagine 
this to be some strange wasp-rite, but it 
is merely Madam Pelopeus getting a load 
of mortar with which to build her walls. 

Often she spends considerable time run- 
ning up and down the bank 
looking for just the right spot 
from which to gather her load. 
And sometimes she starts to 
dig it out from several differ- 
ent places, abandoning them 
one by one until she finds mud =~’ 
of a consistency quite to her liking. 

Occasionally she strikes a large grain of 
sand or a little pebble, and this causes her 
to use what one fears is rather strong wasp 
language. She flirts her wings, buzzes 
vehemently, and flings the obstruction 
away In a manner that well expresses her 
feelings, if wasp ne mean anything 
at all. 


195 


196 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


As she works she curls up her precious 
antenne so that the delicate tips cannot 
come in contact with the earth. 

Sometimes her load is so large that she 
is obliged to hold it in place by clasping 
her forelegs about it. 

When she has her little ball in her jaws, 
she flies home. 

Her load is so heavy that she is tilted 
down by it, her head often being much 
lower than the rest of her body. Up goes 
her tail, down goes her head and she 
speeds away on hurrying wings, soon 
lost to sight, unless her nest hap- 


=~" pens to be very near the mud upon 


which she is working. 
Mud-daubers once made their nests 
under the roof of a small shed, coming in 
and going out through a little window at 
one end. And here it was discovered that 

they, too, have their troubles. 
The wind was blowing, the window was 
small, and as the laden wasp neared the 


THE MASONS 


opening, the wind caught her and blew 
her away. 

Often she had to try several times be- 
fore she could make port. When carried 
past the opening, she made a wide circuit 
and sometimes stopped for a moment to 
rest. Then she put on all steam and 
headed for the window again. 

Once in, she ran up the wall of the 
shed to her unfinished mud-cradle at the 
top, and proceeded to apply her load. 

She laid the mud down with her jaws, 
apparently moistening it with a liquid from 
her mouth, and all the time she was at 
work she sang merrily. 

The mud-dauber always sings at her 
work. 

Her song may be expressive of peace 
and happiness from a-mud-dauber’s 
point of view, but to the unskilled inter- 
pretation of man it has rather a sound 
of intense anxiety, as though she were 
keyed up to the highest pitch and were 


198 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


venting her feelings in a querulous 
outcry. 

Indeed her voice during the process of 
nest-building is a shrill, high-keyed buzz-. 
ing not unlike the sound made by a large 
fly when caught in a spider’s web, and it 
often leads to her detection when she is 
building in concealed corners. 

One summer, mud-daubers’ nests were 
searched for in vain. They are always 
common enough— until one begins to 
look for them. Because they were wanted 
that summer— or for some other reason — 
they could not be found. 

The wasps themselves were abundant, 
and were seen constantly at work in a 
muddy place near the barn pump. But 
where they took their pellets of mud was 
another matter. Not a mud-nest was to 
be found in the barn or in the attic of the 
house. 

There seemed no solution to the mys- 
tery until it was one day unexpectedly 


THE MASONS 


solved. The voice of a wasp was heard 
buzzing out its high-keyed song of indus- 
try, though no wasp could be seen. At 
first the tell-tale song was dismissed as the 
crying of a fly in distress, but when it re- 
curred again and again search was made 
and the sound traced to one corner of the 
attic, where at length her ladyship was dis- 
covered working for dear life over a rafter, 
between that and the shingles. 

She had found a hole somewhere in the 
roof, and had chosen this most secret and 
safe retreat. At least it would have been 
secret had she kept quiet, and it was safe 
enough, as it was impossible to get it 
without unroofing the house. Although 
the Pelopeus of to-day has learned to use 
the roofs provided by man, where there 
are none handy she finds a dry shelter 
under a stone or in the stump of a tree, 
and there makes her mud cradles, this 
doubtless having been her habit in those 
long ago times, when wasps existed, but 


199 


200 


WASPS AND: THETR WAYS 


men’s houses had not yet covered the 
earth for the benefit of the little masons. 

After applying the load of mud in the 
little shed, Pelopeus flew out to the roof of 
another shed, settled on it in the sun, 
cleaned her face and hands, then settled 
herself, apparently for a nap. 

It was a very short nap, however, for 
suddenly starting up, she flew quickly to a 
near mud-hole, worked as if her life de- 
pended on it, flew home, and in the same 
eager, restless way applied her load of mud 
to the nest. Then she rested on the sunny 
roof again. She averaged about two loads 
a minute including her nap. 

In order to see her build, it was neces- 
sary to stand on a box close to the nest, 
and with the head of the observer quite 
close to the roof. When Pelopzus came 
in at the window and saw this strange, 
immense, living object so near her nest, 
she did not understand it. She flew 
straight at the face of the intruder, who, 


THE MASONS 


as may be supposed, fairly held her breath 
and steeled her nerves to receive as com- 
posedly as possible a deliberate and well- 
deserved stinging. 

But wasps seldom sting if they stop to 
deliberate, and Pelopeus certainly was not 
anxious to imperil her future by stinging 
unnecessarily, and thereby risking the loss 
of her sting, which is also her ovipositor, 
and which is in danger of being left in 
the wound if she uses it for purposes of 
discipline. 

She poised in front of the intruder’s 
face so close that it was trying, to at least 
one of the actors in this little drama, to 
maintain the situation. Not a motion be- 
trayed the fact that Pelopeus’ strange 
visitor was alive, not a muscle moved, and, 
perhaps concluding she had mysteriously 
encountered some sort of mummy or 
ghost, Pelopeus went about her busi- 
ness — and allowed the intruder to remain 
about hers. 


201 


202 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


The door to the shed having been left 
open, the wasp when her work was done 
flew out at the large opening, but she 
never came in that way. She always ap- 
peared at the little window, battling with 
the wind and holding on to her precious 
load of mud, although had she gone 
around to the side of the shed she would 
have found a much easier entrance. 

She brought load after load in against 
the wind and built the walls of her oblong 
cells, making each just the right size to 
contain a pupa, although the wasp occu- 
pant began as a tiny egg, and the mother 

Ze wasp had no experience of it in 
Am any other form. She built three or 

, Pulpfour cells side by side, then above 
these she piled others, making 
it . ‘edo or three tiers. Each little 


‘oma cave had a round opening at one 


end. 
Generally the pile of cells was all plas- 
tered over into a shapeless mass before the 


THE MASONS 


203 


wasp got through with it, perhaps with a 
view to strengthening the whole, though 
sometimes the cells were distinct, as at first 
made, with pretty braided roofs. For the 
mud was laid on in strips, first one side 
and then the other, giving a braided effect 
to the result. 

As soon as a cell was completed, it was 
stocked with provisions and the opening 
shut up with a pellet of mud. 

The mud-dauber does not give her off- 
spring personal attention. She does not 
come day after day and put food into 
ever-open mouths. Being quite alone in 
her maternal duties, she cannot possibly 
rear her family and defend them after the 
manner of the Vespe. She takes care of 
them, but it is after her own fashion. She 
catches spiders, and fills the little mud 
cell full. Upon one of the first caught, she 
deposits an egg. This is usually attached 
to the succulent abdomen of the spider, 
and when the cell is as full as it can be, 


204 


WASPS ‘(AND THETR Wie 


the end 1s sealed up, and the egg left to 
take care of itself. 

The mud-dauber cannot store up active 
spiders, or the tables might very quickly 
be turned, and Pelopeus’ tender offspring 

become converted into spider, 
\ instead of the reverse happen- 


(= ing as intended. 
a) So Pelopeus catches her 


a spider and stings it. Generally 
she does not kill it at once, 


but stings it enough to paralyse it; in 
which state it remains as fresh food for 
the larva, though, truth to tell, that raven- 
ous infant does not seem to care much 
whether its food is alive or not. It de- 
vours dead spiders as eagerly as living 
ones. Mother Pelopeus has learned the 
trick of stinging spiders to perfection: 
grasping her indignant and resentful prey, 
she thrusts her poisoned dart into its nerve 
centres so as to quiet it at once. Many 
people believe the wasps sting the insect 


tHE MASONS 


used as food on purpose to paralyse, and 
not to kill it. Since in nearly all nests a 
part — and sometimes all 
—of the spiders are 
dead, and since the larve 
eat the dead as eagerly 
as the living, it is prob- 
able the stinging is done, primarily, for 
the purpose of quieting the spiders as 
soon as possible. 

The egg in the mud cell hatches in two 
or three days, the larva breakfasts, dines, 
and sups on abundance of fat spider, and 
gTOWS apace. 

When the larva begins its gastronomic 
operations, it is a little oblong white object 
without legs, lying in a room tightly 
packed with luscious spiders. When it 
ends its gormandising, the cell is still filled, 
but not now with spider— in the form of 
spider. The spider has been duly con- 
verted into wasp. When, by some chemi- 
cal and vital action, the tiny white larva 


206 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


has changed into a large fat one that 
almost fills the cell— all the spiders have 
been consumed. Not even the legs have 
been omitted, but all that was spider has 
been reduced to food by the powerful 
digestion of the ever-hungry larva. 
Nothing now remains but a young glut- 
ton, which, having devoured its whole store 
of provisions, fortunately discovers that it 
no longer craves food. It craves rest and 
a snug retreat. From its lip exudes a fluid 
that upon exposure to the air hardens into 
silk. It moves its head restlessly ; wher- 
ever its mouth touches the wall of the cell, 
a thread of silk is drawn out. 
, Soon it begins to spin in 
4 earnest, and forms a loose lin- 
ing to its cell. Then it forms 
a close, dense covering about its body. At 
first this covering is nearly white, but it 
soon changes to a dark-brown, brittle case, 
that looks like the shell of a butterfly 
chrysalis, excepting that it is very fragile 


THE MASONS 


and almost transparent. Within this shell 
the marvellous transformation takes place 
that changes a white, legless grub into a 
perfect wasp, with its complex legs, eyes, 
antenne, and sting. 

When the transformation is complete, 
the wasp bites a hole through the end of 
its cell, moistening the hard mud with a 
liquid from its mouth, the delicate pupa 


skin that covers it is broken off, and it - 


comes forth into the world to see what ts 
next to be learned of life. 

There are about an equal number of 
male and female mud-daubers hatched in 
a season, and like other wasps, the male 
mud-daubers have no stings. 

Soon after coming from the cell the 
wasps mate, and the female begins to 
make mud cells. 

If the eggs are laid early in the summer, 
the wasps hatch out and go to work at 
once to build nests and lay their eggs. If, 
however, the egg is laid in the fall, the 


207 


208 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


pupa lies all winter in its cell, not coming 
forth until the following spring. 

The mother wasp dies soon after the 
eggs are laid, but if she is hatched late in 
the season and does not lay her eggs, then 
she crawls into some safe crevice and 
lies dormant, like the queen vespa, until 
Spring. 

- Egg-laying seems to be the culmination 
of an insect’s life, and nearly all of them 
die as soon as the eggs are laid and the 
future of their race is thus assured. The 
wasp is no exception to this general rule ; 
she will live through the winter in order 
to lay her eggs the following season, but 
if she lays them she dies at the approach 
of winter. The queen bee, that lives sev- 
eral years, is one of the few exceptions to 
the rule. Generally the mud-daubers build 
new cells for their progeny, but individual 
wasps differ as much as individuals of any 
other race of animals ; and occasionally one 
will use an old nest, cleaning out the 


— 
j 
hy 


THE MASONS 


209 


mud cells and restocking them with provi- 
sions, thus saving the labour of carrying 
mud for a new nest. A number of queens 
have even been observed working amicably 
together, clearing out and re-fitting the 
cells in a large cluster left over from the 
season before. 

In the fall of the year the female mud- 
daubers often come into the houses and 
crawl into clothes that may be hanging in 
a room. 

Occasionally some one puts on a gar- 
ment which contains one or more of these 
seekers after a cosy winter retreat, when 
the consequences are more amusing to the 
onlookers than to the victim. 

However, the sting of the mud-daubers 
does not amount to much, unless a great 
many of them are received at once, as in 
the case of a gentleman who put ona 
suit of clothes that had been hanging in a 
closet for a week. All unsuspecting of 


the dozen wasps that had chosen his gar- 
14 


210 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ments for their winter home, he went out 
to dine in state at the house of a friend. 
He was no sooner seated at the table than 
the wasps, yielding to the genial warmth 
of their new surroundings, waked up. 
One by one they began to avenge the 
wrong done them, and with perspiration 
on his brow and anger in his heart, the 
gentleman was compelled to make a pre- 
cipitate exit, leaving explanations for a 
future and more auspicious occasion. 

The mud-daubers in the little shed had 
a good deal of difficulty in finding spiders 
with which to stock their nests. They pre- 
ferred a certain plump yellow-and-brown 
variety which builds a circular web, and 
upon which they pounced as it sat in 
the middle of its nest, hoping itself to 
pounce upon some hapless insect en- 
tangled by its silken threads. 

The wasp swoops upon the spider like a 
hawk upon a bird, snatches Arachne away, 
and plunges a poisoned sting into her 


THE MASONS 


vitals before the little spinner knows what 
has happened. Sometimes Pelopzus in 
her extremity darts at an empty web, as if 
hoping against hope that some toothsome 
spider might be lurking near. 

The mud-daubers sometimes close the 
end of an empty cell until they are ready 
to fill it. This is evidently done to keep 
out trespassers. 

A very amusing quarrel was once 
watched between two mud-daubers that 
both wanted the same cluster of cells. 
Whether they had built the cells in com- 
mon, or whether one had built them and 
the other had decided it was easier to 
occupy them than to build some for her- 
self, is unknown. 

But at the time they were discovered 
one was sitting on the nest, evidently 
waiting to pounce upon the other. When- 
ever Number Two appeared, Number One 
would “go for” her, and a lively skirmish 
would ensue, Number One holding the 


211 


212 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


fort, and going back to sit in triumph on 
her castle wall, after having chased Num- 
ber Two away. 

As all the cells were closed and no new 
ones being made, it was not at first appar- 
ent what the fuss was about. Presently, 
however, Number One, having been left in 
peace for a few moments, began to tap the 
cells with her antenne, and finally she 
began to gnaw a hole in the end of one of 
them. What did it meaner Was she un- 
capping her rival’s cell? Did she mean to - 
destroy the helpless larva and scatter the 
enclosed spiders P 

The observer watched with breathless 
interest until finally a round hole was so 
neatly made that the cell looked exactly 
like one that had not yet been capped. 
And lo! this cell was empty! The wasp 
went in and examined it; evidently find- 
ing all as she had left it, she flew off and 
soon returned with a spider which she 
deposited in the far end of the cell, after 


THE MASONS 


a long struggle with the booty, which was 
almost too large for the little store-house, 
and which appeared to have too many and 
too long legs for the use to which it was 
being put. 

The wasp’s own legs and wings were 
also superfluities in this particular walk of 
life, and though she could go 
in easily enough, when she = 
struggled out backwards, he 
seemed on the point of being LAL 
torn off and left behind with the piles in 
the cell. One wished she could unhook 
her members and hang them up outside, 
though such an arrangement would very 
likely have resulted in her complete over- 
throw, as Number Two undoubtedly would 
have run away with them, and thus have 
had Number One in her power. 

As it was, Number One managed to 
struggle free with all her parts upon her, 
and this done she stood on the cell and 
looked around. Meantime Number Two 


214 WASPS AND THEIR: WATS 


had hidden behind the mass of cells, and 

there she remained until Number One flew 

away, when she at once appeared and went 
and put her head into the 
oe tee, open cell as if to see what 
AX RN had been going on there. 
FIG Ait She appeared to want to go 
ca a) in and pull that spider out 
—but it was tucked away at the far end 
and she probably dared not trust her per- 
son in a position of such advantage to a 
vindictive foe. 

Well for her she did not, for while she 
was still investigating, along came Number 
One with a second spider, and away ran 
Number Two. 

The spider was crowded into the nest 
with the same trouble as to superfluous 
legs and wings on the part of captor and 
prey as before, then Number One, suspect- 
ing Number Two, made chase for her. 
There was a skirmish, in which the two 
grappled and rolled head over heels, Num- 


THE MASONS 


_ ber Two finally dropping to the ground, 


and Number One going for more spiders. 

Number Two was not out of the com- 
bat for good, however. She promptly 
returned to the nest, went to the back of 
it, gnawed into a closed cell, triumphantly 
hauled out a spider and flew off with it. 
She did not eat it, but flying to a bush 
near at hand, she dropped it and returned 
to the nest. 

Did the spider so cast out contain the 
ego of her hated rival? The observer 
made a faithful search for the discarded 
spider, but it was impossible to find it in 
the thick foliage of the bush. 

The case was getting serious; the wasps 
fought constantly, and the one that was 
carrying spiders was so disturbed that 
there was little probability of the nest 
being completed, when the observer came 
to the rescue. Troublesome Number Two 
was incarcerated in an insect net, which 
mishap, no doubt, greatly rejoiced the 


215 


216 


WASPS AND TRETR Wane 


heart of Number One, who continued her 
labours zealously; and next morning the 
cell was found closed for good, with a 
cap of mud of much darker colour than 
that of which the rest of the cell was 
built. 

Mud-daubers’ nests are often built of 
several shades of mud, sometimes one set 
of cells being curiously patched with light 
and dark colours. Sometimes the nests 
are built of sand, held together, perhaps, 
by a secretion from the wasp’s mouth, 
and once a cluster of nests was found, in 
which four were composed of white plas- 
ter, this material the wasps having recog- 
nised and appropriated as an admirable 
material for nest-making. 

In the red-clay country of the Carolinas 
the nests are bright red, and make very 
pretty decorations to the interiors of the 
houses; at least, so think some people. 
Others hold another opinion, and fall upon 
these red nests and break them to pieces, 


THE MASONS 


and try—in vain—to remove all traces 
of their presence. 

All the mud nests are very friable and 
easily broken, so that it is difficult to re- 
move a cluster of them without destroying 
some. The mud of the nests does not 
seem to be glued together with secretion 
from the wasp’s mouth, at least not as a 
rule, but merely dries, and thus keeps its 
form. It is moulded solidly, so that when 
dry it is strong enough for the purpose 
unless it happens to be placed where, 
through some accident, the rain wets it, 
in which event it quickly falls to pieces. 

In taking down the cells in the little 
shed the lower tier was broken, and a 
larva left exposed in one cell, while a pupa 
in its shell was exposed in another. The 
anxious mother, returning to finish her 
last cell and finding the whole fabric gone, 
with only these luckless infants left and 
exposed to a merciless world, at once set 
to work plastering them up again. Evi- 


218 


WASPSVAND THEIR: Wate 


dently feeling that the half-grown larva 
was a lost wasp anyway, she wasted no 
time on it, but relentlessly walled it up, 


or rather floored it over, with not a spider 


to stay its appetite, and proceeded to build 
another cell above it. 

The pupa, however, she covered over 
with mud, reproducing its lost cell as well 
as she could, doubtless feeling that all it 
needed was to have the cold air kept out, 
in order to surmount its misfortunes and 
in time fulfil its destiny. 

When a mud-dauber begins to provision 
with one species of spider, it continues 
with the same species, and even selects 
subjects all of a size as nearly as possible. 
Thus the inside of the nest presents a very 
orderly, and were it not for prejudice, 
appetising appearance. 

The mud-wasp’s habit of provisioning 
her cell with insects gave rise to a 
strange superstition in China, and also in 
India. 


THE MASONS 


She was seen putting the insect in her 
nest and sealing it up there, but that she 
laid an egg on it was not known. 

It was consequently believed that she 
transformed the insect into her own pro- 
geny, and as she plastered up the opening, 
hummed a song over it saying, ‘‘Class 
with me, class with me.” Gradually the 
transformation took place, until a perfect 
wasp emerged the following season. 

The mud-daubers are easily tamed if 
taken in time. Once a nest was kept ina 
room so warm that the first wasp began 
to gnaw out while the outer world was 
still under a blanket of snow. When its 
head began to appear, young Pelopzus 
was helped out with a pin. Its antenne 


were stroked and touched with the finger, 


and it was given a drop of honey on the 
tip of the same finger. 

Finally Pelopeus crawled out on the 
warm hand of her human friend. The 
warmth was grateful to her and she stayed 


219 


220 


WASPS AND. THEIR: WAYS 


there as long as allowed. She was trans- 
ferred to the window, but from time to 
time fed from her owner’s hand and was 
allowed to creep into the warm palm and 
stay a little while. She soon learned to 
come for her meals, and never missed an 
opportunity to heat her. sluggish blood in 
the palm of her friend. Indeed she did not 
always wait for an invitation, and it was 
necessary to keep on guard so as not to 
close the hand suddenly, thereby, perhaps, 
squeezing and frightening a live wasp, that 
might suddenly remember she had a sting 
to be used when the world went wrong with 
her, although she did not seem to know 
she was possessed of a defensive weapon. 
But one sad day, the maid, not being 
acquainted with Pelopeus, put her out of 


the window. Meantime another wasp 


had hatched out unobserved. Pelopzus’ 
owner, coming in and seeing, as she sup- 
posed, her little pet upon the window, 
picked up the wrong wasp! 


THE MASONS 


Now, though the Pelopeus is the most 
gentle of creatures to those she knows, 
even she could not be expected to submit 
_ without preparation to being handled by a 
fearful great monster that seemed about to 
destroy her. The new Pelopeus, fright- 
ened out of her wits, no doubt, instantly 
took the defensive; all the worst attri- 
butes of a wasp’s nature came to the front. 
She, an untamed Pelopeus, had been 
treated like a tame one, but she did not act 
in the least like a tame one, and as the 
friendly hand closed over her irate person 
—it may be well to draw a curtain over 
what followed. 


dauber. There is a brilliant blue crea- 
ture, Pelopeus ceruleus, not quite so 
slender and elegant in form as cemen- vf 
tarius, but of such rich colouring that she 
makes up in brilliancy what she lacks in 
form. Her body, legs, and head are a deep 


221 


222 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


metallic blue, and her wings are also blue, 
with lovely purple lights on them. 

She is fond of finding her way into 
attics and under roofs, and there making 
her little mud-nests. In some sections of 
the country she 1s even more common 
than cementarius, and the habits of the 
two are quite similar. 

Indeed, all the mud-daubers live and 
work like members of one family. 

They all require a great deal of water, 
and they are not at all particular about the 
purity of their drink. A thirsty cementa- 
rius once flew to a paint-box, and alighting 
in one of the compartments containing a 
vivid blue paint, there drank deep draughts 
with evident satisfaction. 

One cannot help wondering what might 
have been the consequences if she had 
been kept on a diet of different coloured 
paints. Would she have become brilliantly 
variegated; as some flowers do when their 
stems are put into coloured water, or would 


THE MASONS 


her life have paid the forfeit of a too free 
indulgence in bright waters? 


There is a black wasp, less often met 
with than the common mud-dauber, that 
builds galleries several inches long. 
Each gallery is partitioned off into 
compartments about the size of the 
mud-dauber’s cell. The galleries 


223 


are placed vertically on the side of | A . VE ‘ 


a door-post or elsewhere, and the | Z-R& 


little architect lays out the plan of 1 BES <\ 


her house before building it. That 
the gallery may maintain its proper 
width and be kept straight, two ‘if !:- 
parallel lines of mud the right distance 
apart are first laid down and upon these 
as guides the arch of the tube its built. 
This mud gallery is very prettily braided, 
and is not defaced by being plastered over. 
Sometimes several galleries are built side 
by side touching each other. Sometimes 
the tube is built to its full length before 


224 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


being divided into partitions, and again 
the partitions are made as her ladyship 
advances. 

When the tube is fairly started, if she 
does not want to wait for its completion 
before laying in provisions and depositing 
eggs, the wasp fills the end of it with 
spiders, lays her eggs on one of them, 
builds a thick mud partition, and proceeds 
to lengthen the tube. As soon as it Is 
long enough she stocks the next com- 
partment, and closes it, and thus con- 
tinues until she has finished five or six 
cells. 

All the cells, or compartments, are of 
the same size, and each is just the size to 
hold a pupa. 

The wasp sings loudly as she builds her 
pretty apartment-houses with their braided 
roofs. 

These nests cannot be removed un- 
broken, as the surface upon which they 
rest forms the floor, and as there is no 


THE MASONS 225 


second tier of cells, if the nests are dis- 
turbed all of the occupants are exposed to 
the air, which is fatal to their lives. 

The young of these wasps develop and 
spin their cocoons the same as those of 
the common mud-daubers. 


There is a pretty little creature belonging 
to the family of the true wasps, that makes 
a nest of mud or clay in the form of ’ 
a tiny vase, and many a time the sy 
dainty piece of pottery has been_ eer‘ 
found on a bush and wondered” S51} J 
over. N 

The little vase is stored with in- 
sects, an egg is laid on one of them, 
and the mouth of the jar is sealed. 
Sometimes a whole row of these 
pretty pygmy vases are found on one 
twig, though more often but one is found 
at a time. 

There are a number of small wasps 


that have most interesting and sometimes 
15 


226 


WASPS AND-.THEIR WAYS 


troublesome habits, as in the case of that 
Odynerus that seems specially devoted to 
plastering up keyholes! 

It provisions the inside of the lock with 
fresh stung insects, lays its egg, and to 
make all secure carefully plasters up the 
keyhole with moist mud that soon dries 
into a hard mass that resists the entrance 
of all disturbers, keys included. 

One of these wasps once added materi- 
ally to the interior decoration of a beauti- 
ful cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
This cabin was finished with pine inside, 
and there were many screws used, the 
heads of which were sunk a quarter of an 
inch in the wood. The place was not 
used during the summer. Here was 
opportunity indeed for wasps that pre- 
ferred to exercise their intelligence rather 
than their muscles. No hard work for 
them! They merely provisioned those 
holes and sealed them up. When the 
cabin was opened next spring it was found 


THE MASONS 


elaborately decorated with round white 
circles over all the screw-holes. 

One Odynerus in this country makes a 
many-compartmented mud-nest as large as 
a hen’s egg, and attaches it to a bush. 


The mud-wasps make a separate cell for 
each larva, and this great amount of labour 
is perhaps rendered necessary by the car- 
nivorous character of the young. 

It-may be true that “birds in their little 
nests agree,” but it does not follow that 
wasps in their little nests agree. The 
probabilities are that these voracious in- 
fants, if more than one occupied the same 
cell, would eat each other up. Not be- 
cause they were wicked, but because they 
were very young, and very hungry, and 
did not know the difference between 
spider and brother-larva. 

Wasp larve eagerly feed upon each 
other if the nests are broken and the oc- 
cupants spilled out, as happens to some 


227 


228 


WASPS -AND THEIR WAYS 


extent whenever these fragile structures 
are taken as specimens. 

Each devouring infant having a cell of 
provisions to itself, 1t cannot eat the mem- 
bers of its own family, and it cannot get 
more than its own share of food. 

Different species of mud-wasps are found 
in different parts of the world, and Mr. 
Bates in his “ The Naturalist on the River 
Amazon,” tells an interesting story of 
one he became familiar with in South 
America. He says, — 

“The shallow pits, excavated in the 


marly soil at Mahica, were very attractive 


to many kinds of mason-bees and wasps, 
who make use of the clay to build their 
nest with. 

“The most conspicuous was a large 
yellow-and-black wasp, with a remarkably 
long and narrow waist, the Pelopzus fistu- 
laris. It collected the clay in little round 
pellets, which it carried off, after rolling 
them into a convenient shape in its man- 


THE MASONS 


dibles. It came straight to the pit with a 
loud hum, and on alighting, lost not a 
moment in beginning to work ; finishing 
the kneading of its little load in two or 
three minutes. The nest of this species is 
shaped like a pouch, two inches in length, 
and is attached to a branch or other pro- 
jecting object. 

“One of these restless artificers once 
began to build on the handle of a chest 
in the cabin of my canoe, when we 
were Stationary at a place for several 
days. 

“It was .so intent on its work that it 
allowed me to inspect the movements of 
its mouth with a lens whilst it was laying 
on the mortar. 

“Every fresh pellet was brought in with 
a triumphant song, which changed to a 
cheerful, busy hum when it alighted and 
began to work. 

“The little ball of moist clay was laid on 
the edge of the cell, and then spread out 


229 


230 


WASPS AND. THEIR WAYS 


around the circular rim, by means of the 
lower lip guided by the mandibles. 

“The insect placed itself astride over the 
rim to work, and, on finishing each addi- 
tion to the structure, took a turn round, pat- 
ting the sides with its feet, inside and out, 
before flying off to gather a fresh pellet. 

“It worked only in sunny weather, and 
the previous layer was sometimes not quite 
dry when the new coating was added. 

“The whole structure takes about a 
week to complete. 

“I left the place before the gay little 
builder had quite finished her task: she 
did not accompany the canoe, although we 
moved along the bank of the river very 
slowly.” 

Mr. Bates describes a mud wasp of 
another genus but with habits similar to 
those of the Pelopeus, and describes also a 
large black kind, three fourths of an inch 
in length, that “ makes a tremendous fuss 
whilst building its cell. 


THE MASONS 231 


“Tt often chooses the walls or doors of 
chambers for this purpose, and when two 
or three are at work in the same whe 
place their loud humming keeps x yf 224 
the house in an uproar.” es 
A little one of this genus 
“makes a neat little nest shaped like a 
carafe; building rows of them together in 
the corners of verandas.” 


THE CARPENTERS 


RETTY little wasps, shaped and col- 
oured more like yellow-jackets than 
mud-daubers, construct their nests. in 
wood, burrowing into logs or boards and 
there chipping out a cavity large enough 
to contain the egg and its provisions. — 

They are usually of small size, with 
black, shining bodies ringed with one or 
more bands of yellow. 

Some of them are so yellow-jacket-like 
in appearance that their occupation is all 
that distinguishes them to the eye of the 
hasty observer. 

=~ They are pretty, busy little 

om" =~creatures, very alert and 
quick in their movements. 

Their heads are much 

larger in proportion than the heads of the 


yellow-jackets, and they have large, strong 
232 


DRE VSAKPEN TERS 


253 


jaws, as is necessary to carpenters that 
work with their heads instead of their 
hands. 

One spring a number of them took a 
fancy to drill into the logs of a cabin on 
a mountain top in the western part of 
Virginia. 

The first one that appeared upon the 
scene was a Slender little creature, about 
half the length of a mud-dauber. 

She went about examining the log, evi- 
dently with a view to settlement. 

She poked into every little worm-hole 
and cranny in the bark, and was a long 
time in finding a place to her liking. 

At last she succeeded, and then the 
chips began to fly. 

She found a little hole not large enough 
and not deep enough, and this she pro- 
ceeded to develop into a nest. 

She bit out particles of wood with her 
strong jaws. When she had loosened a 
chip or a fibre, she backed out of her hole, 


234 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


flew away a few feet; and dropped it; then 
she returned and gnawed out another fibre, 
or else cut little bits like fine saw-dust. 

She always crept into her hole head first, 
and backed out tail first, losing no time 
and wasting no energy in superfluous 
motions. And she always flew away with 
her chips, and dropped them some distance 
from her door. 

Had she littered up her doorway, the 
traces of her labour might have betrayed 
her to the enemy. 

For there is always an enemy lying in 
wait for the miners. 

This enemy is an exceedingly beautiful 
little rascal about as large as a house-fly, 
and of a brilliant metallic green. 

It, too, belongs to the Order 


ores Hymenoptera, though it is not at 


the wasp end of that division. 

It is a Chrysis fly, that, instead of mak- 
ing a nest for itself, dogs the miner wasps, 
and watches with interest the progress of 


thie CARPENTERS 


235 


its neighbour’s nursery. As soon as the 
hole in the log is finished, the first insect 
stored away, and the wasp gone for an- 
other, in pops little green madam. She 
lays her egg in the snug retreat that cost 
her only vigilance to secure, and away she 
goes. 

But woe to her if she is caught in the 
act, for the wasp knows her well and 
understands perfectly her thievish inten- 
tions, and if she so much as sees her in 
the neighbourhood of the nest there is 
trouble. The wasp makes a dash for the 
chrysis, but the little green rascal is so very 
quick in her movements that she generally 
escapes unharmed. 

She appears to go away after this inhos- 
pitable reception, but she does not really 
go. She still lurks near, watching opera- 
tions — and watching her chance. 

If she succeeds in getting into the nest 
when the wasp is away she deposits her egg, 
and her interest in that nest is at an end. 


236 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


The wasp goes on provisioning what 
she believes to be the larder of her own 
offspring, wholly unconscious that the 
chrysis has outwitted her, and that she is 
labouring for the progeny of her hated foe. 

When the Virginia wasp had finished 
the nest, stored it with provisions and laid 
her egg, she carefully sealed the entrance 
with mud and went away, leaving her 
progeny to care for itself. 

She spent part of two days making her 
nest. 

At first she was shy and would not 
work when closely observed, but she soon 
lost all fear of her human friends, and 
burrowed away as if she had the whole 
place to herself. She often stopped to rest 
and to sip the nectar from wild flowers 
that grew near the door-step. 

The second morning of her work was 
rainy, and like all her tribe, she declined to 
expose her person to the storm; but when 
the sun shone out in the afternoon, there 


THE CARPENTERS 


was the little carpenter as busy and as 
alert as ever. 

In course of time the egg hidden with 
so much care in the wood hatches. The 
larva, in as impregnable a fortress as any 
one could desire, begins at once upon the 
delightful occupation of consuming lus- 
cious flies or aphides, or whatever delec- 
table pabulum its mother has stored up 
for it. 

It eats and grows. Having nothing to 
do but eat, and being so constituted that 
it does not suffer from the lack of other 
exercise, It grows rapidly. 

Like the other wasp larve it is a little 
white, legless grub, and at length, having 
eaten up everything it can find, it spins 
itself a silken cocoon in which to undergo 
the transformations that will cause it to 
become a perfect wasp, with all the organs 
and powers and desires of a wasp. 

Its cocoon has sometimes been found 
gay with the wings of the insects it has 


238 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


eaten, which are woven into its silken 
covering; and sometimes it uses the chips 
of wood it may find in its nest in the same 
way. | 

Whether it considers these additions 
ornamental, or whether it uses them to get 
them out of the way, itself alone knows. 

When the transformation is completed, 
the mud cap is gnawed away and forth 
from the log issues a young wasp. 

These things happen to a larva into 
whose nest no chrysis has found place. 

Where the chrysis egg is laid in the 
nest there is another story to tell. 

The vigorous young chrysis devours the 
food intended for the wasp — and_inci- 
dentally devours the wasp too. 

Now matters go on as before, only that 
a changeling occupies the cradle. It eats 
and grows —it becomes a pupa— trans- 
forms to an adult chrysis —bites its way 
out through the mud cap, and comes forth 
— ready to try for its own offspring the 


Pie CARPENTERS 


clever but thievish experiment by which 
its infancy was so well nourished at so 
little cost to its mother. 

These little green chryses are so quick 
in their movements that it is extremely 
difficult to catch them even with a net. 
They are outlaws by nature, and have the 
craft and fleetness acquired by outlaws, 
whether those picturesque products of 
nature are human or hymenopteran. 

Their brilliant dress flashing in the sun 
betrays these wicked Robin Hoods at a 
glance, but they are bold and fearless, and 
wear their glistening attire with as devil- 
may-care a grace as did the outlaws of the 
greenwood of old. 

The wasps chisel out a separate hole for 
each egg laid, and about an equal number 

of both sexes are hatched, as is the case 
' with nearly all the solitary wasps. 

The males, as is true of most wasps, 
soon die, leaving their mates to carry on 
the affairs of the family. 


259 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS. 


It is always the female that digs out the 
holes in the wood and catches and stings 
the insects she puts in as food. The 

‘Smale, having no. sting, could not 
~ assist in the provisioning of his 
household even if his life were sufficiently 
prolonged. 

The wasp leads a busy and arduous life, 
and also a precarious one, as witness the 
innumerable little nests of the various 
species that have been begun but never 
_ finished. 


On the logs .of the Virginia cabin came 
another species of miner wasp, smaller 
than the first, but otherwise closely resem- 
bling’ it. 

This little one made a tiny hole, just as 
the larger one had done, but when it had 
finished it lined its nest with a gluey © 
material from its own mouth and sealed 
it — not with mud — but with a glistening 
substance like the lining. 


THE ‘CARPENTERS 


It was not discovered what these nests 
were provisioned with, as neither wasp 
was caught in the act of carrying in its 
booty, and it would have been very diffi- 
cult to cut the nests out, as well as dis- 
figuring to the cabin. 


_ Another miner wasp, with a strikingly 
yellow-jacket-like appearance, was seen 
later in the summer carrying something 
into a little hole between the shingles on a 
New England sea-shore house. 

She went in so quickly, however, that 
it was not possible to discover the nature 
of her victim. When she had carried in a 
number of small insects she closed the 
opening and went away. 

In choosing the neat little tunnel made 
by the shingles where they did not quite 
come together and were roofed over by 
the shingle above, this clever wasp saved 
herself the trouble of digging out her own 
hole. 


16 


242 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


But clever as she was, she may not have 
been clever enough to escape the brilliant 
green little rascal that lay in wait. For she 
too had her chrysis, that ran swiftly about 
in her absence, evidently scenting the wasp 
whose retreat she could not find. Whether 
Robin Hood did or did not find the nght 
hole between the shingles in time to de- 
fraud the wasp of her honest labours, could 
not be discovered. 

The carpenter or wood-boring wasps 
frequently use any convenient opening for 
their nests, some having been discovered 
occupying holes in the mortar of a brick 
wall. 

Trypoxylon is a slender-waisted black 
little carpenter, ornamented with a red 
girdle in one species, and with white hairs 
on her legs in another. The red-girdled 
Trypoxylon, or rubrocinctum, was one 
summer watched making her nests in a 
straw-stack. “ The stack had been cut off 
perfectly smooth on one side, so that many 


PEE: CARPENTERS 


thousands of the cut ends of the straws 
were exposed to view, and these proved 
very attractive to rubrocinctum.” 

These wasps provision their nests with 
spiders, and with mud partition their tun- 
nels into compartments. With them the 
males are not the idle members of society 
that they are with so many of the wasps. 
The female still makes the nest, or selects 
the straw, as the case may be, provisions 
and partitions it, but greatly to his credit 
be it said, ‘“ When the preliminary work of 
clearing the nest and erecting the inner 
partition has been performed by the female, 
the male takes up his station inside the 
cell, facing outward, his little head just 
filling the opening. Here he stands on 
guard for the greater part of the time until 
the nest is provisioned and sealed up, 
occasionally varying the monotony of his 
task by a short flight. Asa usual thing 
all the work is performed by the female, 
who applies herself to her duties with 


243 


244 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


greater or less industry according to her 
individual character; but the male doubt- 
less discharges an important office in pro- 
tecting the nest from parasites. We have 
frequently seen him drive away the bril- 
liant green Cdrysis fly, which is always 
waiting about for a chance to enter an un- 
guarded nest. On these occasions the 
defence is carried on with great vigour, the 
fly being pursued for some distance into 
the air. There are usually two or three 
unmated males flying about in the neigh- 
bourhood of the nests, poking their heads | 
into unused holes, and occasionally trying 
to enter one that is occupied, but never, so 
far as we have seen, with any success, the 
male in charge being always quite ready 
and able to take care of his rights. The 
males, however, made no objection when 
strange females entered the nest, as they 
sometimes did by mistake, nor did the 
females object to the entrance of a strange 
male when the one belonging to the nest 


THESCARPENTERS 


happened to be away, but in such cases 
the rightful owner, on his return, quickly 
ejected the intruder. We often amused 
ourselves, while we were watching the 
nests, by approaching the little male, as 
he stood in his doorway, with a blade of 
grass. He always attacked it valiantly, 


and sometimes grasped it so tightly in his 


mandibles that he could be drawn out of 
the nest with it. 

‘“When the female returns to the nest 
with a spider the male flies out to make 
way for her, and then as she goes in he 
alights on her back and enters with her. 
When she comes out again she brings 
him with her, but he at once re-enters, 
and then, after a moment, comes out 
and backs in, so that he faces outward as 
before. 

“In one instance, with rubrocinctum, 
when the work of storing the nest had 
been delayed by rainy weather, we saw 
the male assisting by taking the spiders 


245 


246 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


from the female as she brought them, and 
packing them into the nest, leaving her 
free to hunt for more. This was an espe- 
cially attentive little fellow, as he guarded 
the nest almost continuously for four 
days, the female sometimes being gone for 
hours at a time. On the last day he even 
revisited the nest three or four times after 
it had been sealed up.” 

These wasps sing merrily while packing 
away the spiders in their narrow tunnels, 
and in the case of those inhabiting the 
straw-stack, the little mother often searched 
for some time before finding her own par- 
ticular straw, sometimes going into other 
wasps’ straws a number of times before 
coming to her own doorway. One should 
think it might be puzzling to locate the 
exact straw out of a whole stack of them. 
And this straw-stack was estimated to be 
the mausoleum of from six to twelve 
thousand spiders! 

While most of the wood-borers are 


ene CART ENTERS 


small wasps, there are some giants of 
the race that bore holes several inches 
long in solid wood, and naturally these 
are not regarded with favour by man, 
as they spoil the timber into which they 
tunnel. 


One sometimes breaks the dry stalk of 
an elder, bramble, sumac, or other pithy 
plant, to find the central cavity partitioned 
into compartments and stuffed with mo- 
tionless insects. The meaning of this is 
evident. One of the carpenter wasps has 
been at work fitting up its nursery; for 
certain species of them prefer a hollow 
twig to any other building-place. Some- 
where in each compartment is an egg, or 
it may be a larva has already hatched and 
is contentedly eating its way to adult 
waspdom through its roomful of stored- 
up insects. Later these larve will have 
spun themselves cocoons, and will go 
through the pupal stage common to all 


247 


248 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


wasps, and later with their strong adult 
jaws will gnaw out of their prison cells, 
and soon after will gnaw into other dead 
branches in the interest of their own 
progeny. 

A very pretty story is told about one 
of these little stem-tunnelling wasps, the 
Crabro stirpicola, a tiny creature only 
a quarter of an inch long, with a black- 
and yellow banded body and yellow legs. 
She was found at half-past five o’clock 


\ in the afternoon, when she had _ just 


begun her excavation. “Her manners 
were an agreeable contrast to those of 
the wasps that we had been watching 
through the day. The feverish excitement 
of their ways seemed quite in keeping 
with the burning heat of noon, while 
Crabro’s slow and gentle movements har- 
monised perfectly with the long shadows 
of evening.” 

But Crabro was persevering, if not 
tempestuous; she bit out the pith with her 


PFHE CARPENTERS 


jaws, and when a quantity had accumu- 
lated, backed out, pushing it behind her 
and kicking it away with her hind legs. 
The hours wore on and still Crabro bit 
and shoved and kicked out pellets of pith. 
Others might sleep at night and work like 
whirlwinds in the daytime; she, calm and 
steady, worked all night long, and all the 
next day, and all the next night, and part 
of the third day, stopping only ten min- 
utes for refreshments during her forty- 
two-hour task. 

She was watched closely all this time, a 
bottle to catch her chips being put over 
the stem at night to record her progress, 
and if she grew not weary her observers 
did. ‘‘ We began to wonder if she would 
ever finish her task. Wonderful though 
she was, we had grown a little weary of 
our long session of watching. We had 
been glad that she worked through the 
first night; it was creditable to her and 
interesting to us, and we admired her even 


249 


250 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


more for sticking to it through the second, 
but when it looked as though we might 
have to remain by her side through an- 
other long day, watching an endless series 
of loads as they were carried out, we con- 
fess that we thought she was rather over- 
doing it. Gradually, however, she slowed 
up her work, taking two or three minutes 
to make a journey down and up. At last, 
at just nine o'clock, her head appeared 
at the top of the stalk, and after a slight 
hesitation she flew away. The nest was 
completed.” 

This industrious pygmy is quite an ex- 
ception in wasp annals, for as a rule the 
wasps retire at sunset and rest until the sun 
is well up in the morning, though the 
social wasps under pressure of communal 
cares sometimes fly until it is quite dark, 
and are abroad at daybreak. 

All will agree that Crabro Stirpicola 
deserved the eulogium passed upon her by 
her patient watchers: “Surely she takes 


fe CARPENTERS 


the palm for industry, not only from 
other wasps, but from the ant and bee as 
well.” 

Although the nest was excavated, little 
Crabro’s labours were not over, for it had 
to be provisioned, and for the next three 
or four days she was industriously seeking, 
catching, and storing flies. Let us hope 
that between times she rested on some 
lovely flower-cluster, and refreshed herself 
with nectar. 

The end of her little drama is tragic, as 
so often happens with the wasps. She 
succeeded in stocking one cell, laying 
one egg, and closing the compartment 
with pith, and that was all; she went 
forth never to return. What happened 
to her, nobody knows, but somewhere 
in the big world where evil creatures lie 
in wait for little wasps, she met her 
death. 

Her tunnel was thirty-nine centimetres 
in length, long enough to allow of ten 


251 


252 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


or twelve compartments, one above 
another. 


Where wasps partition long tunnels into 
a number of cells, the egg last laid is near 
the entrance, and one wonders how the 
wasps from the first-laid eggs at the other 
end of the tunnel are able to get out. 
In wasp life this seemingly difficult prob- 
lem has been easily solved. 

The wasp from the last-laid egg is the 
first to mature. 

The last wasp in is the first wasp out. 
The one next behind matures next, gnaws 
through its cap, finds itself in its neigh- 
bour’s empty cell, through which it crawls 
to the outer world. The next wasp in 
succession comes through two empty cells, 
and so on, until all are safely out. Usually 
there are not more than four or five of 
these adjoining compartments. 

Wasps use a variety of materials in lin- 
ing and closing their cells. Some are 


Pee CARPENTERS 


found lined with a white, cottony, felt-like 
substance, some with a gluey material, 
some with a silken, web-like substance, 
and some are not lined at all. 

To those having time and_ inclination, 
there is opportunity for much original 
investigation in the habits of the solitary 
wasps. 


253 


THE MINERS 


HESE wasps dig tunnels in the ground. 
One sees them, in the hottest part of 

the summer, working as if the intense heat 
were the power that put them in motion. 
The hotter the day, the more fiercely they 
work, and when not digging they are fly- 
ing swiftly about as if looking for some- 
thing they were in desperate need 
3 of finding, and finding right away, 

y One cannot help noticing them, 
zs * particularly as some of them are 
of very large size and present a 
most formidable appearance. They are all 
harmless, however, if let alone. The sol- 
itary wasp will never go out of its way 
to sting. Queens, whether bees or wasps, 
do not carelessly risk the loss of the sting, 
which is also the ovipositor, its loss entail- 


ing the destruction of the mother insect, 
254 


THE MINERS 


255 


and of course of her possible progeny. The 
solitary female wasps are all “queens”; 
that is, all perfect, egg-laying females. 
The wasps that dig in the ground have 
long legs furnished with spines or brushes 
of hairs, by means of which they dig holes 
or brush away or smooth over the earth at 
the entrance to their nests. They are very 
energetic creatures, some of them complet- 
ing a tunnel three or four inches long in 
an hour or two, though some are more 
deliberate by nature and spend a day or 
two completing their underground nurs- 
erles. Sometimes they use their jaws not 
only to loosen the earth, but to remove it 
from the entrance to the nest. Even here 
the legs are more or less useful in kicking 
away the debris at the doorway, or brush- 
ing up and smoothing over the entrance 
to the hole when it is finally closed, and 
the careful mother wishes to conceal it. 
Some species use the legs far more than 
the jaws in excavating, and some of these 


256 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


get down to their work very much after 
the fashion of a dog digging out a wood- 
chuck’s hole. They scratch out the dirt 
with such rapidity that it issues in a little 
jet or stream behind them. 

There are a great many species of them, 
and while some are quite small, others 
are the giants of the wasp race. 

One of the largest in this 
country is a black creature 

‘ « with bands of yellow on the ab- 
domen, the Sphecius speciosus. 

It digs burrows two feet or 
E more long, and provisions them 


with the ‘ dog-day locust,” or 


{ ee cicada. When her tunnel is 


ready, Madam Sphecius 
-_Sallies forth, seeking 


Sitting on ee branch of a tree the inne 
cicada fills the air with its shrill and con- 
tinuous song, unsuspecting the awful fate 
that is to bring the unmelodious perform- 


THE: MINERS 


ance to an unnatural end. Suddenly the 
wasp pounces upon the singer, the song 
stops short, there is a tussle, in which both 
sometimes fall to the ground, but during 
which the poor cicada receives the fatal 
thrust. It is now the property of the 
wasp, who proceeds to bear home the 
booty. The cicada is heavy, however, too 
heavy to be borne up in the air, and the 
wasp, knowing the advantage of an ele- 
vated starting-point in such cases, drags 
the heavy body up the nearest tree, and 
from the vantage point thus gained, springs 
into the air and flies home, if the nest is 
near at hand. If it is far away, her burden 
forces the wasp to the earth again, and she 
must needs climb another tree and take a 
fresh start. 

Sometimes she has to climb several trees 
before getting home. Her tunnel ends ina 
pocket, where she places the cicada on its 
back, lays a long white egg on the under 


side of it, and closing the cell leaves her 
A7 


258 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


progeny to hatch out and enjoy a cicada 
diet until it is ready to transform, which it 
does after the fashion of wasps, making 
for itself a silken cocoon and spending the 
winter in its snug cell under ground. 

In Mexico lives an enormous digger- 
wasp that provisions its nest with spiders ; 
not with the harmless fly-catching deni- 
zens of the circular webs, however; its 
royal prey is none other than the great 
hairy tarantula, or trap-door spider, that 
makes a hole in the ground and covers it 
with a door which it can open or close at 
pleasure. The wasp that provides this 
expensive pabulum for its larve is com- 
monly known as the “tarantula hawk,” 
and many a battle royal is fought between 
the fierce, swift wasp and the equally fierce 
and powerful spider. If the spider wins, 
as sometimes happens, the wasp supplies 
her hairy highness with a hard-earned 
meal. If the wasp wins the great spider 
is stung to paralysis, dragged away, and 


THE MINERS 


stored in the underground nest of the 
wasp, to become food for the larva that 
hatches out of the egg laid upon the spi- 
der. If food influences character, no 
wonder the larve fed upon such nutri- 
ment develop into the fiercest of their 
kind. 

More common than these great wasps is 
the beautiful Sphex ichneumonea, a large 
wasp with a long and slender waist and 
wearing a yellow, velvety jacket. Its legs 
and wings are golden brown, as is also the 
big end of the abdomen, the sting end 
being dark brown or 
black. 

It is a striking-look- 
ing insect as one sees it 
flying among the fall 
flowers. It digs very 
rapidly when once it has i 
selected a spot, and hums as it works. 
Although it loosens the earth particle by 
particle with its jaws, which are long, 


259 


260 


WASPS. AND ‘THETR- WAX 


slender, and sickle-shaped, it also uses tts 


legs to carry away the débris. The earth 


is borne some distance from the nest and 
then dropped, though that which collects 
about the entrance hole 1s kicked vigorously 
aside when the accumulation exceeds what 
her ladyship considers proper limits. 

When the tunnel is deep enough Madam 
Sphex flies away, but as a rule not far, for 
the grass about 1s alive with grasshoppers, 
and it does not take the brilliant, strong, 
and merciless creature long to select one, 
upon which she pounces. The grasshop- 
per is quite helpless before the fate that 
has overtaken it, and yields its life with 
scarcely a protesting struggle. Having 
been stung and thus instantly paralysed, 
it is carried to the nest, dragged in, and 
shut up there with the egg of the wasp; 
for, having deposited her treasure within 
and laid the egg, Sphex scratches earth 
into the open end with her legs, very 
much as a dog might. 


THE MINERS 


That wasps are possessed of strong 
maternal feeling can be shown by inter- 
~ fering with their unfinished nests, when 
their distress lest misfortune overtake their 
eggs appears as great as that of many 
creatures whose progeny is about them, 
needing their personal care. 

Once the nest of Sphex ichneumonea 
was dug up before the mother had quite 
finished filling the entrance with earth. 
The marauders, who wished to examine 
the contents of the nest, say, — 

“We had not supposed that the digging 
up of her nest would much disturb our 
Sphex, since her connection with it was so 
nearly at an end, but in this we were mis- 
taken. When we returned to the garden 
about half an hour after we had done the 
deed, we heard her loud and anxious hum- 
ming from a distance. She was searching 
far and near for her treasure-house, return- 
ing every few minutes to the right spot, 
although the upturned earth had entirely 


261 


262 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


changed its appearance. She seemed un- 
able to believe her eyes, and her persistent 
refusal to accept the fact that her nest had 
been destroyed was pathetic. She stayed 
about the garden all through the day, and 
made so many visits to us, getting under 
our umbrellas and thrusting her tremen- 
dous personality into our very faces, that 
we wondered if she were trying to ques- 
tion us as to the whereabouts of her 
property.” 

Earth-digging wasps are always on the 
watch for parasitic enemies. Many of them 
close their burrows upon leaving them 
even for a short time, and some of 
them exercise great ingenuity in removing 
all traces of their presence or in marking 
the spot, probably for their own assistance 
in identifying it upon their return. Nor 
is caution unnecessary, as the parasitic flies 
are often seen hunting about the neigh- 
bourhood of a wasp’s excavation, looking 
for the nest during the absence of the 


THE MINERS 


rightful owner. That wasps carefully 
examine the location of their nests, and 
remember the details of their surroundings, 
no one can doubt who has watched them 
at their labours. They do not leave a new 
nest until they have located it, sometimes 
flying back several times to take 
a final look before going away. 
Once, while a wasp was gone from __ 
its newly excavated nest to look for 
prey, a human observer, who had been 
prying with great interest into the private 
affairs of wasp life, broke off a large leaf 
that partly concealed the nest, in order 
to see it better. When Madam wasp 
returned she was so much puzzled at the 
altered appearance of her dooryard that 
she could not find her hole, but flew back 
and forth in its vicinity, examining the 
surrounding objects in a state of evident 
excitement, until the leaf was laid back in 
its old position, when she at once ran to 
her nest. 


263 


264 


WASPS AND -THEIR* WAYS 


The same observer once accompanied 
an Ammophila home through a way so 
intricate that the wonder was the creature 
ever accomplished the herculean task. 
This Ammophila was a little black wasp, 
with the usual well-developed intellect of 
the Ammophila folk — for of all the wasps, 
they are among the most intelligent. 

“During the earlier part of the summer 
we had often seen these wasps feeding 
upon the nectar of flowers, especially upon 
that of the sorrel, of which they are par- 
ticularly fond, but at that time we gave 
them but passing notice. One bright 
morning in the middle of July, however, 
we came upon one that was so evidently 
hunting, and hunting in earnest, that we 
gave up everything else to follow her. 
The ground was covered, more or less 
thickly, with patches of purslane, and it 
was under these weeds that our Am- 
mopbila was eagerly searching for her 
prey. After thoroughly investigating one 


THE MINERS 


plant she would pass to another, running 
three or four steps and then bounding as 
though she were made of thistledown and 
were too light to remain upon the ground. 
We followed her easily, and as she was in 
full view nearly all of the time, we had 
every hope of witnessing the capture, but 
in this we were destined to disappoint- 
ment. We had been in attendance on her 
for about a quarter of an hour, when, after 
disappearing for a few moments under the 
thick purslane leaves, she 

came out with a green 

caterpillar. We had missed - , 
the wonderful sight of the’: ~., 
paralyser at work, but we = -~ 
had no time to bemoan our loss, for she 
was making off at so rapid a pace that 
we were well occupied in keeping up 
with her. She hurried along with the 
same motion as before, unembarrassed 
by the weight of her victim. Twice she 
dropped it and circled over it a moment 


265 


266 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


before taking it again. For sixty feet she 
kept to open ground, passing between two 
rows of bushes, but at the end of this 
division of the garden, she plunged, very 
much to our dismay, into a field of stand- 
ing corn. Here we had great difficulty in 
following her, since, far from keeping to 
her former orderly course, she zigzagged 
among the plants in the most bewildering 
fashion, although keeping a general direc- 
tion of northeast. It seemed quite impos- 
sible that she could know where she was 
going. The corn rose to a height of six 
feet all around us; the ground was uni- 
form in appearance, and, to our eyes, each 
group of corn-stalks was just like every 
other group; and yet, without pause or 
hesitation, the little creature passed quickly 
along, as we might through the familiar 
Streets of our native town. 

‘‘ At last she paused and laid the burden 
down. Ah! the power that has led her is 
not a blind, mechanically perfect instinct, 


THE MINERS 


for she has travelled a little too far. She 
must go back one row into the open space 
that she has already crossed, although not 
just at this point. Nothing like a nest is 
visible to us. The surface of the ground 
looks all alike, and it is with exclamations 
of wonder that we see our little guide lift 
two pellets of earth which have served as 
a covering to a small opening running 
down into the ground. 

“The way being thus prepared, she hur- 
ries back with her wings quivering and her 
whole manner betokening joyful triumph 
at the completion of her task. , 
We, in the meantime, have be-‘¢%z 


come as much excited over the > 
matter as she is herself. She 
picks up the caterpillar, brings 
it to the mouth of the burrow 
and lays it down. Then, backing in her- 


AY 


267 


, 


¢ 


ae 


teas 
Gre 


self, she catches it in her mandibles and — 


drags it out of sight, leaving us full of 
admiration and delight. 


268 


WASPS AND T.AHELR WAS 


“How clear and accurate must be the 
observing powers of these wonderful little 
creatures! Every patch of ground must, 
for them, have its own character; a pebble 
here, a larger stone there, a trifling tuft of 
grass —these must be their landmarks. 
And the wonder of it is that their interest 
in each nest is so temporary. A burrow 
is dug, provisioned, and closed up, all in 
two or three days, and then another is 
made in a new place with everything to 
learn over again.” 

That the wasp actually observes and 
remembers the surroundings of her nest, 
those just quoted proved to their cost 
again and again by disturbing the grass or 
weeds near the nest in order to see more 
easily, when the wasp kept them wait- 
ing endless minutes while she searched 
blindly about, evidently puzzled by the 
changes. 

The wasps also noticed at once strange 
objects, as pebbles or seed-pods put near 


THE MINERS 


their nests, and one abandoned her burrow 
because lines had been drawn in the sand 
near it. 

Mr. Bates tells the following story of 
the wasps at Santarem, illustrating their 
wonderful ability to find their way back 
to their burrows, — 

“While resting in the shade during the 
great heat of the early hours of afternoon, 
I used to find amusement in watching the 
proceedings of the sand-wasps. A small 
pale-green kind of Bembex was plentiful 
near the Bay of Mapiri. When they are at 


work, a number of little jets of sand are . 


seen shooting over the surface of the slop- 
ing bank. The little miners excavate with 
their fore-feet, which are strongly built and 
furnished with a fringe of stiff bristles; 
they work with wonderful rapidity, and 
the sand thrown out beneath their bodies 
issues in continuous streams. They are 
solitary wasps, each female working on 
her own account. 


269 


270 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


“After making a gallery two or three 
inches in length, in a slanting direction 
from the surface, the owner backs out, 
and takes a few turns round the orifice, 
apparently to see whether it is well made, 
but in reality, | believe, to take note of the 
locality, that she may find it again. This 
done, the busy workwoman flies away; 
but returns, after an absence varying in 
different cases from a few minutes to an 
hour or more, with a fly in her grasp, 
with which she re-enters her mine. On 
again emerging, the entrance is carefully 
closed with sand. ...I1 have said that 
the Bembex on leaving her mine, took 
note of the locality ; this seemed to be the 
explanation of the short delay previous to 
her taking flight; on rising in the air, also, 
the insects generally flew round over the 
place before making straight off. Another 
nearly allied, but much larger species, the 
Monedula signata, whose habits I observed 
on the banks of the Upper Amazons, 


y 


THE MINERS 


sometimes excanvates its mies solitarily, on 
sand-baks rencently laid bare n the middle 
of the river, and closes the orifice before 
going in search of prey. In these cases 
the insect has to make a journey of at least 
half a mile to procure the kind of fly, the 
Mottca, with which it provisions its cell. 
I often noticed it to take a few turns in 
the air round the place before starting; on 


its return it made, without hesitation, 


straight for the closed mouth of the mine. 
I was convinced that the insects noted the 
bearings of their nests, and the direction 
they took in flying from them. The pro- 
ceeding in this and similar cases seems to 
be a mental act of the same nature as that 
which takes place in ourselves when recog- 
nising a locality. The senses, however, 
must be immeasurably more keen, and the 
mental operation much more certain, in 
them than they are in man; for to my eye 
there was absolutely no landmark on the 
even surface of sand which could serve as 


271 


272 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


guide, and the borders of the forest were 
not nearer than half a mile. The Mone- 
dula signata is a good friend to travellers 
in those parts of the Amazons which are 
infested with the bloodthirsty Motiica. 
I first noticed its habit of preying on this 
fly one day when we landed to make our 
fire and dine, on the borders of the forest 
adjoining a sand-bank. The insect is as 
large as a hornet, and has a most waspish 
appearance. 

‘“T was rather startled when one out of 
the flock which was hovering about us 
flew straight at my face; it had espied a 
Motitica on my neck, and was thus pounc- 
ing upon it. It seizes the fly, not with its 
mandibles, but with its fore and middle 
feet, and carries it off tightly held to its 
breast. Wherever the traveller lands in 
the Upper Amazons in the neighbourhood 
of a sand-bank, he is sure to be attended 
by one or more of these useful vermin- 
killers.” | 


THE: MAVER'S 


The solitary wasps, having to search out 
anew place for each cell, and being also 
obliged oftentimes to go far for their prey, 
find it necessary to exercise both observa- 
tion and memory, and that is doubtless 
the reason they have become so very 
skilful in finding their way to a given 
spot. Each nest made presents a new 
problem, and as long as the wasp has to 
solve these problems by its own unaided 
skill there is little danger of its de- 
generating into a mere mechanical, 


| : ee 
worker. The enforced exercise of \-7=® 


its faculties doubtless has been the 
means of developing them, and will be 
the means of continuing their develop- 
ment. : 
The intelligence of the sand-wasps in 
closing their burrows when they leave 
them is certainly of a high order. 
Ammophila stores her caterpillars in a 
pocket at the end of her rather short tun- 


nel, and when she leaves her nest she is 
18 


273 


274 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


generally careful to close the entrance with 
little pellets of earth, which of course she 
has to remove every time she enters. 
Some species of Ammophila store away 
several small caterpillars in one nest, and 
at least some of them always temporarily 
close the nest before leaving it. Individual 
wasps differ in their manner of making 
and closing the nest, some being very par- 
ticular to see that all is well done, and 
others extremely careless, doing their work 
so badly that the contents of the nest are 
scarcely covered from sight. 

“Of two wasps that we saw close their 
nests on the same day, one wedged two 
or three pellets into the top of the 
hole, kicked in a little dust, and then 
smoothed the surface over, finishing it all 
within five minutes. This one seemed 
possessed by a spirit of hurry and bustle, 
and did not believe in spending time on 
non-essentials. The other, on the contrary, 
was an artist, an idealist. She worked for 


PaiE MENERS 


an hour, first filling the neck of the bur- 
row with fine earth, which was jammed 
down with much energy, this part of the 
work being accompanied by a loud and 
cheerful humming, and next arranging the 
surface of the ground with scrupulous 
care, and sweeping every particle of dust 
to a distance. Even then she was not 
satisfied, but went scampering around 
hunting for some fitting object to crown 
the whole. First she tried to drag a with- 
ered leaf to the spot, but the long stem 
stuck in the ground and embarrassed her. 
Relinquishing this she ran along a branch 
of the plant under which she was working, 
and, leaning over, picked up from the 
ground below a good-sized stone, but the 
effort was too much for her and she turned 
a somersault on to the ground. She then 
started to bring a large lump of earth, but 
this evidently did not come up to her ideal, 
for she dropped it after a moment, and 
seizing another dry leaf, carried it success- 


275 


276 


WASPS. AND! THEIR WAYS 


fully to the spot, and placed it directly 
over the nest.” 

One of the most remarkable perform- 
ances ever recorded of a wasp, is described 
by the same observers, thus, — 

“Just here must be told the story of 
one little wasp whose individuality stands 
out in our minds more distinctly than that 
of any others. We remember her as the 
most fastidious and perfect little worker of 
the whole season, so nice was she in her 
adaptation of means to ends, so busy and 
contented in her labour of love, and so 
pretty in her pride over her completed 
work. In filling up her nest she put her 
head down into it, and bit away the loose 
earth from the sides, letting it fall to the 
bottom of the burrow, and then, after a 
quantity had accumulated, jammed it down 


with her head. Earth was then brought 


from the outside and pressed in, and then 
more was bitten from the sides. When, at 
last, the filling was level with the ground, 


THE MINERS 


she brought a quantity of fine grains of dirt 
to the spot, and picking up a small pebble 
in her mandibles, used it as a hammer in 
pounding them down with rapid strokes, 
thus making this spot as hard and firm as 
the surrounding surface. Before we could 
recover from our astonishment at this per- 
formance, she had dropped her stone and 
was bringing more earth. 
We then threw ourselves 
down on the ground that y 
not a motion might be lost, “ges/ } 
and in a moment we saw — = ~“-- 
her pick up the pebble, and again pound 
the earth into place with it, hammering 
now here and now there, until all was level. 
Once more the whole process was repeated, 
and then the little creature, all unconscious 
of the commotion that she had aroused in 
our minds, unconscious, indeed, of our very 
existence, and intent only on doing her 
work and doing it well, gave one final com- 
prehensive glance around and flew away.” 


278 


WASPS. AND THEIR- WAYS 


This remarkable occurrence is not the 
only one of the kind on record, for in 
Western Kansas a species of Ammophila 
was observed to use a pebble in the same 
way to close the opening to her hole. The 
facts are thus reported, — 

“When the excavation had been carried 
to the required depth, the wasp, after a 
survey of the premises, flying away, soon 
returned with a large pebble in its mandi- 
bles, which it carefully deposited within 
the opening; then, standing over the en- 
trance upon her four posterior feet, she 
(I say she, for it was evident that they 
were all females) rapidly and most amus- 
ingly scraped the dust with her two front 
feet, ‘hand over hand,’ back beneath her, 
till she had filled the hole above the stone 
to the top. The operation so far was re- 
markable enough, but the next procedure 
was more so. When she had heaped up 
the dirt to her satisfaction, she again flew 
away, and immediately returned with a 


THE MINERS 


smaller pebble, perhaps an eighth of an 
inch in diameter, and then, standing more 
nearly erect, with the front feet folded 
beneath her, she pressed down the dust all 
over and about the opening, smoothing off 
the surface, and accompanying the action 
with a peculiar rasping sound. After all 
this was done, and she spent several min- 
utes each time in thus stamping the earth, 
so that only a keen eye could detect any 
abrasion of the surface, she laid aside the 
little pebble and flew away, to be gone 
some minutes. 

“Upon her return she bore a large green 
larva, and laying it down near the door, 
she opened her carefully closed burrow, 
dragged in her prize and sealed it up as 
carefully as before, again using the little 
pebble to pound down the surface. This 
laborious operation was repeated several 
times until the requisite number of larve 
had been stored. Once the observer varied 
the routine by taking away the little peb- 


279 


280 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


ble that closed the door, while the wasp 
was in her hole. Returning, she looked 
about for her door, but not finding it, 
apparently mistrusted the honesty of a 
neighbour, which had just descended, 
leaving her own door temptingly near. 
She purloined this pebble and was making 
off with it, when the rightful owner ap- 
peared and gave chase, compelling her to 
relinquish it.” 

There is another very remarkable story 
of an Ammophila, told by Mr. Theodore 
Pergande to the Entomological Society of 
Washington. While on a gravelly slope 
Mr. Pergande noticed a female sand-wasp, 
belonging to the genus Ammophila, flying 
about in a peculiar fashion. Presently it 
alighted and ran briskly about in every 
direction, with the head close to the ground 
and the abdomen elevated, while the an- 
tenn were in constant agitation, as if 
searching for something important, though 
nothing in any-way striking to the eye 


THE MINERS 


could be seen-on the bare sand which 
could have attracted its attention. Sud- 
denly it stopped at a certain spot, pressed 
the head close to the ground, and com- 
menced beating the ground with its abdo- 
men, producing at the same time a quite 
sharp sound similar to dss, bss, bss, tap- 
ping with each sound the earth with its 
abdomen. It continued this performance 
for some time, running or flying off a 
short distance twice or thrice during brief 
intervals. Finally it picked up with its 
jaws ‘a small pebble, carried it to the 
mysterious spot, and deposited it on top, 
pressing the pebble down 
as much as possible to 


insure its remaining in ~ gee <7 Poh 
—_ ‘{\ Se | te aad et 
S= -= d = 


position. Running then ~~ =_ 


again a distance away, it picked up another 
pebble and placed it close to the first one; 


-after a while a third was added. No more 


pebbles of the desired size being near 
enough at hand, it ran some distance 


281 


282 


WASPS AND THEIR: WAYS 


farther, when it came across a pebble 
which appeared to suit its purpose; took 
hold and lifted it, but unfortunately the 
shape of this little stone was such that it 
slipped from its jaws. It tried again and 
again for quite a while to obtain a good 
hold, though without success, when it left 
it in apparent disgust. Running about 
after this failure for some time, in search 
of a more suitable stone, but not finding 
what was wanted, she returned to her little 
monument of pebbles and commenced to 
rearrange them and press them down as 
much as possible. After being satisfied 
that everything was well done, 
: she flew away, not to return.” 
XS 7 ~—s After she had gone Mr. Per- 
“a in gande removed the little stones 
~ and dug out her caterpillar, 
with the egg attached. 
Evidently this wasp had. 
found the exact location of her nest by 
listening to the sounds made by striking 


THE MINERS 


the abdomen against the ground and buz- 
zing at the same moment. 

The Ammophila finds in paralysing her 
caterpillars a more difficult problem than 
faces those wasps that use the adult insect 


as provision for their young. <A _ well- - 


directed sting in the central nerve-ganglion 
of an adult insect is enough to paralyse, 
or even to kill it, but the caterpillar, being 
a larva and composed of a number of 
segments, each with its own nerve centre, 
requires more heroic treatment, and this, 
Ammophila well knows. She catches her 
caterpillar and stings it, not once, but sev- 
eral times, each time in or near a different 
nerve-centre. Her performance in poison- 
ing her prey has been thus described by an 
eye-witness, — 

“Standing high on her long legs and 
disregarding the continued struggles of 
her victim, she lifted it from the ground, 
curved the end of her abdomen under its 
body, and darted her sting between the 


283 


284 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


third and fourth segments. From this 
instant there was a complete cessation of 
movement on the part of the unfortunate 
caterpillar. Limp and helpless, it could 
offer no further opposition 
to the will. of its conqueror. 
fm for some moments the 
-' wasp remained motionless, 
and then, withdrawing 
her sting, she plunged it successively 
between the third and the second, and 
between the second and the first segments. 

“The caterpillar was now left lying on 
the ground. Fora moment the wasp cir- 
cled above it and then seized it again, 
further back this time, and with great 
deliberation and nicety of action gave it 
four more stings, beginning between the 
ninth and tenth segments and progressing 
backward.” 

This order of proceeding is not by any 
means invariable with the wasps; some 
sting but two or three times; some sting 


THE, MINERS 


nearly all the segments. The number of 
stings applied and the order in which they 
are given depend upon the individual wasp. 
They all understand in a general way the 
advisability of stinging a caterpillar more 
than once, but beyond this they exercise 
their own judgment. 


While the miners generally live quite 
apart from each other, some species con- 
gregate together in colonies, as do certain 
species of the solitary bees; where this 
is the case it is quite an experience to 
come upon the broad, bare spot usually 
Selected by these fierce-looking settlers. 
Each wasp has her own hole, which she 
locates accurately and finds immediately 
after an absence; she does not stumble 
into her neighbour’s nursery, and probably 
would meet a very bad reception if she 
did. These wasps must possess quite en- 
viable powers of observation, as well as 
very reliable memories, to enable them to 


285 


286 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


come flying rapidly from a distance and 
drop upon just the right spot in a bank 
where, to the human eye, there is nothing 
to mark the place, and where all about are 
other concealed burrows of neighbours, 
ready to pounce upon the luckless house- 
holder who should make a mistake and 
attempt to open the wrong door. Al- 
though the wasps live thus in settlements, 
they are no more free from petty disagree- 
ments with their neighbours than are much 
larger and supposedly wiser creatures. 
Sometimes they quarrel, and apparently 
for the mere sake of quarrelling, very likely 
finding in this interesting pastime an out- 
let for overflowing wasp spirits.. Some- 
times they do more than quarrel; they are 
mean enough to steal one another’s provi- 
sions when hunting is poor; and when 
one returns with a prize, several will give 
chase and try to relieve her of her burden. 
Certain of the fossorial wasps, when 
they bring prey to the burrow, first enter 


Lith MINERS 


to see that all is as they left it, leaving the 
captured insect near the entrance. If the 
result of their examination is favourable, 
out comes the wasp and drags in the in- 
sect. Once a French naturalist removed 
the cricket one of these wasps had cap- 
tured and placed close to the entrance to 
her hole while she went in to reconnoitre. 
It was placed several inches 
away, but was shortly found by 
the wasp and dragged back to 
the hole. Again her ladyship - 
went in to reconnoitre and again 
the cricket was taken away. It 
was found as before and dragged 
back, while the wasp, true to her habit, 
went in the hole and left it at the entrance. 
The same thing was repeated over forty 
times, until the patience of the experi- 
menter gave out; and one can imagine the 
nervous condition of the wasp at this 
unaccountable and persistent interference 
with a matter that from her point of view 


287 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


was nobody’s business but her own. Had 
it occurred to Madam to look for trouble- 
some intruders outside the hole instead of 
inside, she would have saved herself a 
great deal of time and strength. | 

That wasps may exercise ingenuity in 
capturing their prey is proved by the fol- 
lowing story. 

A wasp was once seen to alight within 
an inch or two of a spider’s nest on the 
side opposite the opening. 

“Creeping noiselessly around towards 
the entrance of the nest, the wasp stopped 
a little short of it and for a moment re- 
mained perfectly quiet, then reaching out 
one of his antenne he wriggled it before 
the opening and withdrew it. This over- 
ture had the desired effect, for the boss of 
the nest, as large a spider as one ordinarily 
sees, came out to see what was wrong 
and to set it to rights. No sooner had the - 
spider emerged to that point at which he 
was at the worst disadvantage, than the 


—-—_-— =~ 
’ 


THE MINERS 


289 


wasp, with a quick movement, thrust his 
sting into the body of his foe, killing him 
easily and almost instantly. The experi- 
ment was repeated on the part of the 
wasp, and when there was no response 
from the inside, he became satisfied, prob- 
ably, that he held the fort. 

“ At all events he proceeded to enter the 
nest and slaughter the young spiders, which 
were afterwards lugged off one at a time.” 

Another wasp tried a similar experiment 


ona caterpillar rolled in a leaf. The wasp 
examined both ends of the rolled leaf only 


to find them closed. It then clipped a 
hole in one end. Having done this, it 
went to the other end and made a noise 
which frightened the caterpillar and caused 
it to rush out of the hole the wasp had 
cut. Of course the wise wasp seized the 
foolish caterpillar, stung it, and attempted 
to carry it home. Finding it too large, 
her waspship cut it in two, carried away 


one half, and came back for the rest. 
19 


290 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


. Another wasp was once watched trailing 
a spider that tried to escape by running 
into a room and hiding. When the quarry 
disappeared the wasp ran in narrowing 
circles like a hound, and when it struck 
the scent it followed all the turns the 
spider had made, just as a dog would have 
done. , 

The wasp finally captured the spider, 
and tucking it up under its long hind-legs, 
Just as a hawk carries off its quarry, flew 
away with it. 

A few species of wasps catch their 
prey first and then dig the burrow. 
Among these is a pretty little black 
and white creature that rears her pro- 
geny upon spiders. She catches her 
spider and to save it from the ants 
that are always lurking about, she 
sometimes hangs it up in a plant while 
she digs her burrow. She does not always 
do this, and whether this very intelligent 
act depends upon the prevalence of ants in 


Z 


THE MINERS 291 


the neighbourhood, acting upon a superior 
intellectual development of the individual 
wasp that does it, who shall 
say? 

One of these wasps once 
dug her nest and caught her 
spider —a large one, which 
___ She dragged near her burrow. 
“Presently she went to 
look at her nest and seemed to be struck 
with a thought that had already occurred 
to us, —that it was decidedly too small 
to hold the spider. Back she went for 
another survey of her bulky victim, mea- 
sured it with her eye, without touching 
it, drew her conclusions, and at once re- 
turned to the nest and began to make it 
larger. We had several times seen wasps 
enlarge their holes when a trial had demon- 
strated that the spider would not go in, 
but this seemed a remarkably intelligent 
use of the comparative faculty. . . . While 
she was thus employed, the spider was 


292 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


attacked by a very tiny red ant, that could 
not by any possibility have stirred it. 
When the wasp caught sight of this insig- 
nificant marauder she fell into a fit of wild 
fury, and bending her abdomen under, 
seized the ant again and again in her man- 
dibles, and flung it backward against the 
tip of her sting. The little creature finally 
escaped, seeming none the worse for the 
rough handling to which it had been sub- 
jected, while the wasp, still trembling with 
excitement, grasped her spider and rushed 
off to a distance of several feet, carrying 
it up on a weed and depositing it there. 
The labour of excavation was then resumed, 
and after half an hour’s work, was com- 
pleted to her satisfaction. Coming up 
head first, she flattened herself out on 
the ground, and sprawling thus, dragged 
herself all around it. The spider was 
now brought to the nest, being left once 
on the way, while she ran in and out 
again, and was taken in after a new and 


THE MINERS 


original fashion. Backing in herself, she 
seized it by the tip of the abdomen! and 
dragged it down without any trouble, 
since the legs were gently pushed up over 
the head and ‘made no resistance. 

“In two minutes she emerged from the 
opening, and standing on the four poste- 
rior legs, with her abdomen hanging 
down into the hole, scratched the earth 
backward with the front legs and mandi- 
bles. As it fell in she pushed it down 
with the abdomen, and as the hole filled 
She raised herself higher and higher on 
her legs, still using the tip of the abdomen 
to work the material into place.” 

The underground nests of the digger- 
wasps differ in form according to the 
species, and somewhat according to the 
individual. They all make a burrow, how- 
ever, ending in some sort of little com- 
partment, where the insects used as food 
can be stored. Many of them store but 


1 Wasps generally drag their victims down head first. 


293 


294 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


one large insect in a burrow. Many others 
store a number of smaller insects, for the 
nourishment of each larva. A few build 
little pockets or rooms from the side of 
the main burrow, thus constructing a 
house of several rooms, instead of making 
a separate burrow for each egg laid. 

Each species has its favourite insect, 
some catching spiders, some caterpillars, 
some beetles, some bugs, some aphides, 
and so on. 

Some species prefer bees, catching two 
dozen or more wild bees to store one nest; 
and there are wasps in the world that 
prefer honey-bees to anything else, these 
sometimes causing havoc among the 
hives. | 

While some wasps sting their prey to 
paralysis, others injure the captured insects 
very little, and still others sting them to 
death. Some, again, do not sting the in- 
sect at all, but bite it until it is quiet, often 
squeezing the neck with the mandibles 


THE MINERS 


without otherwise injuring the insect. 


The object of stinging seems to have been, 
in the beginning, to render the insect 
quiet, and from this starting-point we find 
all degrees of completeness in paralysing 
the food among the different species. 
While most of the earth-boring species 
provision the nest once for all and close it 
up, we find some that put in. only what 
food the larva requires at the time, and 
from day to day open the nest and replen- 


tsh the store. These care for the young 


after the manner of the social wasps, but 
without the conveniences of the communal 
society composed largely of workers. They 
seem to exist in an intermediate stage be- 
tween the social wasps and the perfected 
diggers. 

The fossorial wasps, having no home to 
which to retire, as the paper-makers have, 
are possessed of a more roving disposition, 
and are particularly fond of flying about in 
the warm sunshine. Many of them have 


295 


296 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


long tongues, similar in structure to the 
tongue of the hornet, but with all the 
parts so elongated that the wasp can reach 
almost as far as a honey-bee into a flower 
cup. | 

They hide away at night and during 
stormy weather in sheltered crevices, and 
some of them dig holes in the ground, 
not for the benefit of their progeny, but 

‘ to provide a lodging for them- 
"— selves. In some instances the 
little male builds himself a tun- 
nel, into which to retire when 
he wishes to rest. 

When the boneset is in 
bloom in late summer, numbers 
of the large wasps may be seen 
at work among its white heads. 
But it is when the goldenrod 
comes into blossom that the wasp col- 
lector and the wasp observer find their 
veritable land of delight. All sorts of bees 
and wasps flock to the goldenrods, as do 


THE MINERS 


also the butterflies, which seem to take a 
mischievous delight in tormenting the 
wasps. 

Time and again when a wasp rises from 
a flower a butterfly will also rise and flutter 
its wings about the distracted wasp, which 
tries to dodge this way and that to escape 
its tormentor. 

One can almost see the wasp get out of 
temper, and the frivolous butterfly laugh at 
it. But getting out of temper with a but- 
terfly is wasted energy; the broad, thin 
wings are unstingable; and indeed the 
wasp does not try to sting, but only to 
dodge away from the mischievous and no 
doubt heartily despised trifler. 

The butterfly can have no_ possible 
object in interfering with the wasp other 
than the mere fun of it, and one is glad to 
discover that butterflies possess, like our- 
selves, a sense of humour. 

In watching wasps one cannot fail to 


make the intimate acquaintance of many 


297 


298 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


other tribes of insects, and the dramas, 
absurd or tragic, always enacting in the 
air about us or on the ground under our 
feet, must be witnessed to be appreciated. 

Insects, like other animals, seem not to 
be devoid of curiosity. One day a small 
green katydid intently observing the sand 
coming out of a hole where a small black 
Sphex was digging away for dear life, went 
and looked in when the wasp retired with 
a load of earth, upon which the wasp be- 
came greatly excited and fell upon that 
katydid and chased him away. Once 
more the too curious katydid walked to- 
ward the hole, but he did not look in this 
time, for the wasp, with quivering wings 
and angry buzzing, ran after him and he 
scampered off not to return, evidently con- 
cluding that discretion was preferable to 
gratified curiosity under the circumstances. 


THE MINERS 


Many of the fossorial wasps are very 
Suspicious, and it requires patience to get 
near enough to watch one at its work of 
nectar-gathering. It cocks its head on 
one side, glances at the intruder, and in a 
flash is off. 

Sometimes, however, the large wasps 
resent intrusion, as one once did on the 
edge of a meadow. It was sitting on a 
willow leaf and did not care 
to be disturbed. Instead of 
flying away it reared itself 
up on its tail, opened its 
jaws and apparently invited <Zz2 ae & 
its visitor to “touch me i 
you dare.” Its visitor did not dare, hav- 
ing no net along; and probably nobody 
would have enjoyed interfering with an 
enormous black wasp that reared up on 
end and looked as that one did. 

Wasps dig many holes, but finish few. 
They seem to have very strict ideas as to 
what a burrow should be, and often start 


299 


300 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


half a dozen before the earth is just right 
to their critical judgment. 

One watching the many fruitless at- 
tempts of the countless numbers of wasps 
winging their way over the earth in the 
latter part of the summer cannot but 
imagine the value of these little earth- 
openers to the soil. Their countless un- 
finished burrows in the hard earth, as well 
as their finished ones, let in air and water; 
the water settles to still deeper parts, and 
later freezing breaks up the hardened soil 
to an extent out of all proportion to the 
work of the little digger. No doubt to 
the wasp we owe in part the fertility of 
the face of the earth. 

Although at times such hard workers, 
wasps appear to waste a great deal of time 
fussing about. 

Small black Sphex wasps were often 
watched flying along the carriage road up 
and down, up and down, alighting every 
moment and running along as though they 


THE MINERS 


had lost something they needed very badly 
but could not find. 

They were doubtless looking for places 
Suitable to dig in, but to the observer 


ignorant of the nicer distinctions of wasp 
problems, they seemed to be very light- 
headed and to be wasting a great deal of 
time. When one had begun to dig its 
hole it was easily frightened away by a 
passer-by, and when it returned employed 
somewhat the tactics of the partridge when 
trying to conceal its young. It did not go 
straight to its hole, but ran a long way 
past it on one side and then on the other 
and hunted about as if it had never started 
a hole in the world. Then, all at once, 
perhaps believing it had thrown any pos- 
sible observer quite off the track, it popped 


301 


302 


WASPS AND THEIR WAX 


into its hole and went to work vigorously 
continuing the excavation. 

There are some species of the digger- 
wasps that make their excavations in bricks 
or in sand-banks that are almost as hard as 
stone. These little miners are as careful 
as the wood-borers not to leave chips 
lying about to betray their presence to the 
enemy. They dig out the hard brick or 
sand with their jaws, moistening and soft- 
ening it with liquid from their mouths, 
and as soon as they have chiselled out.a 
fragment they fly to some distance and 
drop it. They do not go in very far, 
usually not more than two inches. Some- 
times they line with clay the cave they 
have excavated, and stop the opening also 
with clay. 

There is a little miner-wasp in Europe 
that uses the material it removes from its 
burrow in a hard sand-bank to make a round 
tower over its hole. The French naturalist 
Réaumur watched these wasps at work 


THE MINERS 


easily cutting into a sand-bank that was 
almost as hard as stone. Having detached 
a few grains of sand, the wasp kneads it 
into a pellet with liquid from its mouth, 
and this pellet is attached at the mouth of 
the excavation. The wasp forms another 
pellet, adds it to the first, and continues in 
this way until it has constructed a little 
chimney or tower over its hole. The 
tower is not a good piece of masonry, 
however, as the pellets are not carefully 
joined, but openings are often left between 
them. Although the tower at first is 
built perpendicular to the wall upon which 
it rests, at the outer end it is curved to 
correspond to the curve of the insect’s 
body. This makes. the tower easy of 
entrance to the rightful occupant, but 
would exclude a larger enemy. When the 
little nest is finished, provisioned, occu- 
pied, and sealed, the tower, which it seems 
was only a temporary structure is taken 
down as expeditiously as it was put up. 


303 


304 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


There have been various guesses as to 
why this tower is built by the wasp (Ody- 
nerus murarius) Is it to protect the 
young larva from the heat of the sun? 
Is it to keep out the parasitic flies that 
naturally would be discouraged from 
entering into any such deep, dangerous 
tunnel ? 

Man may question, but Odynerus does 
not reply. While he speculates upon her 
object in doing so she continues to build 
her mysterious towers before his eyes quite 
indifferent to his presence or his curiosity. 

One sometimes sees a brilliant scarlet 
and black insect, wingless, ant-like in form, 
but clothed with a thick velvety coat, has- 
tening along a path or a roadside. 

One’s first impulse is to catch it, but 
second thoughts in this case are decidedly 
the best; for this gorgeous “ velvet ant,” as 
it is called, is not an ant at all, but a wasp. 
Although it is so unwasp-like as to have no 
wings, it retains its sting without diminu- 


THE MINERS 


tion, as whoever attempts to pick it up 
will quickly discover. The males are 
winged and are sometimes seen about 
flowers, but the females have given up the 
vanity of wings and remain on the earth, 
where they can run very fast and where 
they dig burrows and store up insects for 
their progeny. There are a great many 
species of the velvet ant, and some of them 
are found in the nests of bumble-bees and 
of other wasps. The Texans call the vel- 
vet ant the Cow-killer ant, and believe that 
its sting is dangerous to cattle. 

Most of the solitary wasps are remark- 
able for their unflagging industry. Each 
excavation in brick or wood or earth may 
take several days to complete; it must 
then be provisioned and sealed, and no 
sooner is this done than the faithful little 
mother begins another. Half a dozen or 
more of these cradle-cells, with provisions 
and infant wasp occupants, testify to her 
industry. 


20 


305 


306 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Late in the season, however, the wasps 
have a grand rally, an enormous picnic, 
where the chief occupations are sitting in 
the sun, drinking nectar from the autumn 
flowers, flying swiftly about in the noon- 
day heat, and getting into the houses, to 
the consternation of the human occupants, 
who, though much larger and stronger 
than wasps, are nevertheless very much 
afraid of them. 

Then can they be caught by the score 
in the skilfully wielded net of the insect 

collector. Big wasps, little 
wasps, black, red, yellow, 


y- blue, white, all colours, 
shapes, and sizes, they may 
ae be gathered in. Then, too, 
“i the young male wasps are 


as abundant as the females, both frequenting 
the goldenrods when the sun Its bright. 
They have their good time drinking 
nectar and eating insects if they feel so 
inclined. Then, too, come the yellow- 


THE MINERS 


jackets and hornets to swell the num- 
bers. 

That wasps are capable of enjoying 
themselves, no one’ can doubt who has 


watched them at this time of year. 


Once a hornet was watched in holiday 
mood, eating a fly while hanging by one 
foot to a twig. 

“The half-eaten fly was held by the 
front feet, while the other legs and the 
wings stuck out carelessly in all directions. 
As the mandibles or jaws and the antenne 
kept in rapid motion; and the fly was 
turned over and over by the fore-feet, the 
wasp swung slowly back and forth with the 


same appearance of enjoyment and comfort 


aS a man eating an apple in a hammock.” 


Nor has the solitary wasp been wholly 
neglected by the ancients; with them it 
too had its use, for Moffett says, — 

“Pliny greatly commendeth the solitary 
Wasp to be very effectual against a Quar- 


308 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


tain Ague, if you catch her with your left 
hand, and tie or fasten her to any part of 
your body (always provided that it must: 
be the first Wasp that you lay hold on that 
year).”” 

There are a number of curious and in- 
teresting little creatures called gall-wasps, 
which belong to the Order Hymenoptera, 
but not to the wasp division. 

The so-called Fig-wasp with its remark- 
able habit of fertilising figs, is not a wasp, 
but belongs rather among the gall-insects, 
which are boring, instead of stinging, 
Hymenoptera. 

No doubt the solitary wasps play their 
part in fertilising the flowers, and are 
valued and necessary agents. 

It should not be forgotten that the 
wasps, through their habit of using insects 
to feed their young, are exceedingly valu- 
able to the agriculturist. From a single 
nest have been taken several dozens of 
canker worms, and even where but few 


THE MINERS 


insects are stored in a burrow, the im- 
mense number of wasps using them acts 
as a check to the insect pests. Aphides, 
caterpillars, beetles, bugs, numberless de- 
structive creatures are laid to rest in the 
nests of the wasps. 

The wasp has its place in the scheme of 
the world, and but for it the hordes of 
insects destructive to vegetation might lay 
waste the gardens of the earth, even to the 
discomfiture of proud man himself. 

Then all honour to the little wasps, 
whose influence in human society may in 
its own sphere be as important and as far- 
reaching as that of more powerful-seeming 
forces. 

All honour to the little wasps, who, a 
link in the endless chain of living things, 
are doing their work and helping to make 
possible that higher civilisation which man 
fondly believes belongs to himself alone. 


309 


2 


NEST CUT IN TWO LENGTHWISE 


Pe PER A AY Dp X 


. “Vespa the wasp is an angrie creature.” 


“ Speculum Mundi,” 1643. — John Swan. 


. The Ettrick Shepherd. ‘‘ Noctes Ambrosian.” 


— Christopher North. 


. Pastor Miiller. ‘Once a Week,” July 9, 


1870. ‘‘ Natural History of Wasps.” 

Pastor Miiller. “ Beitrdge zur Naturgeschichte 
der grossen Hornissen.’’ ‘Magazin der Ento- 
mologie.””—Germar. Halle, 1817. Band iii. 


“ Wasps quickly distinguish colors.” ‘ Some 
Observations on the Special Senses of Wasps.” 
“Proceed. of the Nat. Hist. Soc. of Wiscon- 
sin,” April, 1887. — George W. and Elizabeth 
G. Peckham. 


. Wasps make honey. ‘“ Introduction to Ento- 


mology.’’ — Kirby and Spence. 


. “The naturalist August Saint-Hilaire.” ‘ The 


Insect World.” — Louis Figuier. 
The apple full of wasps. ‘Animal Intelli- 
gence.’’ — Geo. J. Romanes. 
3411 


312 


61. 


62. 


83. 


86. 


86. 


87. 


88. 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


Butcher clipping wings. ‘‘ Nat. Hist. of Wasps.” 
‘“‘ British Social Wasps.” —Edward Latham 
Ormerod, M.D. 

Wasps catching flies on cows. ‘‘ The Zodlogist.” 
London, Oct. 15, 1896. ‘‘ Wasps and their 
Uses.” 

English estate infested by wasps. ‘‘ Nat. Hist. 
of Wasps.” — Ormerod. 

The Iliad, Bk. xii. Bryant’s trans. 


. Virgil. Georgic iv. 


Ovid. Fasti, Lib. iii. 


. ‘Moreover, the Lord thy God.” — Deuteron- 


omy vii. 20. 


. “And I will send hornets.” — Exodus xxiii. 28. 


“And J sent the hornet.”” — Joshua xxiv. 12. 

“ Eight miles from Grandie.” ‘ Curious History 
of Insects.” — Frank Cowan. From second 
volume of Lieutenant Holman’s “ Travels.” 

Engineers on banks of Jumna. ‘Once a Week,” 
July 9, 1870. ‘Natural History of Wasps.”’ 

Shahjehanpoor. ‘‘ From Cadet to Colonel.” — 
Sir Thomas Seaton, K. C. B., 1877. 

Dr. King of Penang. ‘Natural History of 
Wasps.” — Ormerod. 

“ A picket of Lord Clyde’s army.” ‘‘ From 
Cadet to Colonel.” — Sir Thomas Seaton. — 


APPENDIX 


101. Wasps generated from crocodile. ‘ Theatre 
of Insects.”” — Moffett. 

104. Migration to bottom of cell. ‘ Natural History 
of Wasps.” — Ormerod. 

110. Miiller—5 days as egg, 9 days as larva, 13 
days as pupa. Owen— 8 days as egg, 12- 
14 days as larva, 10 days as pupa. 

137-139. South American Nests. “Etudes sur la 
Famille des Vespides.” ‘‘ Monographie des 
Guépes Sociales.’’ — Henri de Saussure. 

137. Mud nest of India. ‘ Natural History of 
Wasps.” — Ormerod. 

138. Mocking-birds. ‘‘ Natural History of Wasps” 
— Ormerod. 

139. The fly-catcher. ‘The Naturalist in Nica- 
ragua.’’? — Thomas Belt. 


139. South American Nests. — Saussure. 
154. “The Creoles of Mauritius,” Backhouse’s 

) “ Mauritius.” — From Cowan. 

158. Wasps in Natal. ‘ Animal Intelligence. ” 
— George J. Romanes. 

160. Edward Topsell. ‘History of Four-footed 
Beasts and Serpents” (bound in large vol. 
with Moffett). 


161. Story of frog-hoppers. ‘The Naturalist in 
Nicaragua. ’”’ — Thomas Belt. 


313 


314 


WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


166. 


167. 
168. 


169. 


T7l- 


171. 
172. 


172. 
173. 
182. 
184. 


107; 
216. 


219. 


Cures for stings. ‘‘ Theatre of Insects. ”” — 
Moffett. 

Allen’s wife. ‘‘ Theatre of Insects.” — Moffett. 

Emperor Vespasian. ‘The History of Our 
Lord as Exemplified in works of Art.” — 
Mrs. Jameson. 

Wasps’ nests burned for asthma and colds ; a 
practice still recommended and employed by 
the negroes of the Southern United States 
‘An infinite number of wasps.’ ‘ Curious 
History of Insects.”” — Frank Cowan. 

“If hornets build low.” Ibid. 

Gamekeeper’s observations. ‘ Natural History 
of Wasps.” — Ormerod. 

Storms at sea: flying at evening. — Topsell. 

Superstitions. — Frank Cowan. 

Sir John Lubbock. ‘‘ Ants, Bees, and Wasps.’ 

‘A specimen of Polistes carnifex.” ‘ The 
Naturalist on the River Amazons.” — Henry 
Walter Bates. 

Three-story nest of Java wasp. — Saussure. 

White plaster nests. ‘On the Instincts and 
Habits of the Solitary Wasps.” “ The mud- 
daubers.” — Geo. W. and Elizabeth G. 
Peckham. 

Chinese superstitions. ‘‘ Curious History of 
Insects.”” — Frank Cowan. 


ae 


278. 


280. 


283. 


267. 


288. 


APPENDIX 


. Trypoxylon in the straw-stack. ‘Instincts and 


Habits of the Solitary Wasps.” ‘‘ The Wood- 
borers.”” — G. W. and E. G. Peckham. 


. Crabro stirpicola. Ibid. ‘‘ The Toilers of the 


Night.” 


. “We had not supposed.’’ Ibid. ‘ The Great 


Golden Digger.” 


. Wasp puzzled by removal of leaf. — Ibid. 


“* Two Spider Hunters.” 


. “The Naturalist on the River Amazons.” ‘ At 


Santarem.”’ — Henry Walter Bates. 


. ‘Of two wasps.” Instincts and Habits of the 


Solitary Wasps.” — G. W. and E. G. Peck- 
ham. ‘ Ammophila and her Caterpillars.” 
“When the excavation.” Ibid. Quoted 
from “ Habits of Ammophila.” —S. W. Wil- 

liston, Lawrence, Kas. 

Mr. Pergande’s story. ‘Life History of 
American Insects.’’ — Clarence Moores Weed. 
“ Standing high on her long legs.” ‘‘ Instincts 
and Habits of the Solitary Wasps.” ‘ Am- 
mophila and Her Caterpillars.” — G. W. and 
E> G,' Peckham. 

Cricket taken from wasp. — Ibid. Experi- 
ment made by M. Fabre. 

“Creeping noiselessly.” ‘Animal  Intelli- 
gence.” — G. J. Romanes. 


315 


316 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 


289. Caterpillar in rolled leaf. — Mr. R. S. Newall, 
F..R.’S. Nature.” Vol. xxis Boe 

290. Wasp trailing spider. —Mr. Henry Cecil. 
“Nature.” Vol. xviii., p. 311. 

290. Wasp hanging up its spider. ‘Instincts and 
Habits of the Solitary Wasps.” ‘‘ The Spider 
Ravishers.””, — G. W. and E. G. Peckham. 
The pictures of suspended spiders are also 
taken from this chapter. 

291. ‘‘ Presently she went to look.’”’ — Ibid. 

292. “ And sprawling thus.” Wasps had been 
noticed before by the same observers acting 
in this peculiar manner, after finishing a 
nest or capturing prey, and it raised the ques- | 
tion as to whether this might be their method 
of expressing pleasurable emotions. 

303. The round tower. ‘Insect Architecture.” — 
J. Rennie. “ The Library of Entertaining 
Knowledge,’ Boston, 1830. Reported of 
Réaumur. 

307. Hornet hanging by one leg and eating fly. 
“Life History of American  Insects.’? — 
Clarence Moores Weed. 


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